


Somebody That I Used To Know

by wishtheworst



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-12
Updated: 2011-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:25:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 54,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishtheworst/pseuds/wishtheworst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duke and Nathan used to be friends -- more than friends. When they were, getting out of Haven seemed like the only way to get free of their history there, but getting out and leaving it behind prove to be two very different things. Set pre-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somebody That I Used To Know

**Author's Note:**

> All my love and thanks to dr_ducktator for her help in betaing this fic and encouraging me to plug away at it after I threatened to throw my computer into the street. Any errors that are left are my own, especially chronological errors. I can't brain math today or any other day.

_August 1995_

Duke tries to look indifferent and Nathan tries to look busy as he packs up the last of his stuff, pulling photographs down from the wall behind his bed. Glossy images of road trips and the last few summers flutter from his fingers and land in a messy pile near Duke’s crossed ankles. He’s as stretched out as he can get in this amount of space, trying to give the illusion of sprawling. Not that Nathan will buy it – they’ve known each other long enough that Duke can’t give the illusion of anything anymore. Besides, there’s no way to sprawl in so little space. Nathan’s bed is the same one he’s had since he stopped sleeping in a crib in his parents’ room and the damn thing seems like it gets shorter every summer. Nathan’s running through his plans for the next day again and Duke tries to feign interest in them, but they remain unchanged since last March. Out of the pair he’s not the planner although he knew the drill by heart; get up early, finish loading up the truck, and get into Orono by noon so he wasn’t the last person moving in. Unpack, settle in, go to the stupid welcoming thing, call home and maybe get to know the new roommate. It was repetitive and he was still more than a little pissed that he wouldn’t be there in the morning. At the same time, it was kind of gratifying to know he’d be getting the call, not Nathan’s father.

“How did you end up with all of these?” he asks, pushing aside everything else in his head one more time. “I have one picture of you and it’s a class picture from the fourth grade.”

“You want some of these? This one?” Nathan holds out one of the pictures he’s just detached. It’s a snapshot of them down at the docks taken at the beginning of the summer. It looks like any other picture of the two of them together, Nathan squinting at the camera, Duke wearing the same exaggerated grin he put on every time he knew his picture was being taken, with one arm thrown around Nathan’s shoulders.

“I guess, yeah.” He sat upright and began sifting through the pictures, pulling tape off the back where Nathan had missed a scrap. “What about this one?”

“No.”

“But I like this one.” It was almost the same picture, but he had no idea it was being taken. So instead of showing off for the camera he’s looking at Nathan with a much smaller and far less manic smile. The embrace is still there, but Duke’s fingers are grazing Nathan’s neck and he’s smiling too instead of looking annoyed. Blink and you miss it.

“Me too.” Nathan pulls it back out of Duke’s hands and inserts it into the neatened stack of photographs. “It’s getting kind of late. I’m surprised he hasn’t come up to throw you out.”

“Maybe he’s still pretending you’re not going?”

He shrugs and leans back against the wall behind him. “Maybe. I stopped worrying about it a while ago. Nothing either of us can do about it now, right?”

The chief (they always call him that, even Nathan, even when he’s within earshot) still hasn’t come around to the idea of his son doing anything after high school other than the state police academy. His junior year had been a constant battle, Nathan leaving college brochures and applications all over the house and the chief throwing them out while he ranted about money not growing on trees. Finally the school stuff stopped appearing and the chief took it as a victory, which Duke could have told him was a mistake. Nathan only went to ground when he was at his most stubborn and ready to kick your ass for good. And that was exactly what he did; spent tourist season working as a deckhand, took odd jobs in the off season, cleaning gutters, shoveling snow, and doing a nice business in duty free Canadian booze with their friends who were under twenty-one. Duke often thought he only had himself to blame for the entrepreneurial streak that actually made Nathan’s college fund worth a damn since that last occupation was his best source of income. Thankfully the chief had no idea how resourceful they could be when left to their own devices and Duke wasn’t above using his own moral flexibility for Nathan. Just when the chief thought he’d won, the same night he called Nathan down to dinner to find a neatly completed background check form on his plate, Nathan told him he’d be leaving at the end of August.

Duke still doesn’t know when Nathan filled out the application and sent it in, because it’s one of those things they don’t talk about. Duke would say some asshole thing because seemed funny at the time and make Nathan feel stupid about it without exactly meaning to, so over the years Nathan has learned that it’s just easier to keep some things to himself until they’re settled. It’s easy enough to imagine him hunched over his desk late at night forcing decent handwriting out of chicken scratch and glancing over his shoulder as if it was something indecent rather than a financial aid form in front of him. Still, Duke has his own ideas about why Nathan’s kept it to himself beyond the usual reasons. He can be reserved to a fault, but eventually he always talks to him. He doesn’t spend a lot of time wondering about how this is different though. If he’s wrong he doesn’t want to know or even admit that he let himself assume and he has no intention of being the one at a disadvantage here. Even when he kind of suspects that he already is.

“Nate.” He twists his fingers in the edge of Nathan’s shirt and pulls him down on top of him, awkward with limbs that are too long for the space. He’s tired of thinking about it, spending so much mental energy on something he had absolutely no control over. He throws a wary glance to the open doorway and lets go of the fabric in favor of the warmth of skin, hands slipping under Nathan’s t-shirt and skimming his ribs. “Let me have the picture.”

Nathan tries to look serious but his eyes always give him away. There are a million things like that Duke wants to say to him, but he isn’t sure how they would be received or if that’s pushing too far. “No way. That’s the only one I have where you don’t look like a douchebag.” He pulls back enough to get some leverage and moves exactly right, his thigh pressing against Duke’s cock and getting him hard with a few seconds of well applied friction.

Duke isn’t entirely clear anymore on how they got here although he remembers being freaked out by the ease of it pretty vividly. Nathan has always been there, constant from his first shady memories to this last night before he leaves home, from the days when Duke was a rotten little shit and Nathan was a perpetually appealing victim. After all, who was really going to feel bad about poking the freak or hurting the kid who can’t feel anything anyway? The boundaries between them just seemed nebulous after that and usually Duke would say he can’t recall how they went from playground enemies to friends to whatever they are now. Part of him knows that it’s more won’t remember than can’t; he knows well enough that their history isn’t particularly flattering to him.

Whatever turns they’ve taken to get here, it’s been the two of them one way or another for as long as he or anyone else can remember and that’s fine by him. He knows there was a time when they didn’t look at each other this way or feel like this because logically there had to have been. It just seems kind of unimportant now. Maybe he should be having some kind of crisis of sexuality, because there have always been girls and he knows from late nights spent swapping stories and exaggerating their conquests that that was the same for Nathan too. But then there was Nathan mixed in with those girls, and now just Nathan. He’s not totally sure and he won’t ask, but he thinks it’s just him for Nathan now too. Part of him is afraid to ask, because it isn’t like that asshole kid has been totally exorcised and every once and a while it strikes him that if this was all an elaborate joke it wouldn’t be wholly outside the realm of what he deserves.

But if that’s the case then Nathan is an amazing con artist. He’s kissing the hell out of him and his mouth is soft and warm, he even tastes good, so there’s not a lot Duke can do other than give back as good as he gets and vow to be a better person as soon as they’re not occupied this way. A more pressing problem immediately presents itself in that there isn’t enough skin to satisfy how much he needs to touch Nathan right now. Somehow the heat of tongues slipping against each other and one hand coursing the curve of his spine, the other shoved inside his jeans cupping hard warmth that strains against his fingers still isn’t enough. It’s a mess, trying to be everywhere all at once, like his brain just disintegrates and he’s nothing but raw-ended exposed nerves and unfocused want. He arches under Nathan and the sharp intake of breath that movement produces cuts through him like razor wire. Duke breaks away from his mouth and tastes the hard line of his jaw, tracing a wet path up to his ear and catching the lobe with his teeth. “Please?”

When he settles back an inch Nathan’s eyes are wide and his breath is coming hard, panting out over what might possibly be the most perfect mouth Duke’s ever seen. “No, I –”

He seals Nathan’s lips with his own again and takes advantage of his surprise, shrugging him off and moving over him. With a grace of motion that is obviously a gift from a higher power devoted to adolescent sex he kicks the desk chair back, sending it hard enough against the door to push it shut. Privacy at least momentarily secured, Duke deals with the button and zipper on Nathan’s jeans and shoves up his t-shirt. Nathan has apparently decided to be at least a little helpful and squirms out of it so eagerly that it’s really hard not to laugh at him. The sharp lines of his collar bones and the hollow of his throat make it a little easier though, and the urge to somehow fit every inch of them together is overwhelming again. He settles for tasting everything between his throat and the shallow dip of his navel, and the rasp of Nathan’s breath makes him want to linger there. He maps hard bone, hot skin, soft flesh with his tongue, closing his eyes and cataloging the taste of Nathan’s skin and the way his hands twist in his hair. He allows himself one last taste, tongue sweeping across the skin just visible in the gap between jeans and his stomach. Then he’s finally pulling at Nathan’s jeans, smiling as he raises up and their fingers meet. They lock together for a moment, Nathan’s twitchy and eager at his touch.

“So can I have it or what?” Duke pulls Nathan’s cock free of his underwear, gripping him lightly and stroking the underside with his thumb. His fingers are slicked as soon as he touches Nathan, and yeah he knows it’s because Nathan is nineteen and they can both get hard if the breeze blows the right way, but he also knows it’s him. It’s him and the two of them together and it’s better than anything so far. He brings his fingers to his mouth taste the stickiness and licks it away where Nathan can see, just to see the way his eyelids flutter down when it hits him in the pit of his stomach and the pins and needles shiver shoots through his arms. Duke has a complicated inventory of what gets Nathan, the slow sweaty builds and the hard and fast necessities, a perpetual work in progress that’s pushing the boundaries between them a little harder all the time. Sometimes it’s a huge relief knowing Nathan is just as helpless to this as he is, and sometimes it’s honestly terrifying because he’s not sure they could stop if they wanted to.

“No.” His eyes snap up to meet Duke’s as he bites his lip in frustration, pushing up into his hand.

“It’s just a picture,” he sighs, bending to mouth the flushed head of his cock. When they started doing this it was awkward, and on one memorable occasion painful, but Duke takes to research when it’s on something that interests him and it turned out that very little interests him more than making Nathan come. A dedicated regimen of practice has resolved almost everything and he likes to think that he has it down now, wondering if Nathan feels the corners of his mouth twist up thinking about it. It’s excruciating, slipping down on his cock this slow, painting careless circles with his tongue half to torment Nathan and half to stave off his own urge to swallow him whole. His fingers twist in Duke’s hair and the restraint Nathan is exerting is obvious, practically crackling around them. He’s considerate, though Duke wonders what it would be like if he didn’t hold back and they weren’t still careful with each other. He isn’t sure how to ask for that, or even if it’s ok. There are a lot of fine, invisible lines surrounding this and he’s not going to be the one to make it weird.

Nathan’s gone tense and wired beneath him, slow steady drag of lips and tongue on his cock rendering him helpless, and he has absolutely no poker face. Sometimes he pleads, asking for more in a soft, frantic voice, but more often it’s handful of expletives or a not-quite-human sounds torn out from deep in his lungs. Duke can take him deeper now than the first few times they did this and Nathan lets out something not unlike a whimper when his cock nudges the back of his throat. He’s rapidly coming apart, nails digging into Duke’s shoulder and the look on his face when Duke moves his mouth away can only be described as outrage. Duke’s working him with one hand as he struggles with his own jeans, and Nathan makes that same small sound again as he watches Duke fist both their cocks.

Duke knows exactly what it looks like and what it does to him, because Nathan told him. Told him in excruciating detail three weeks ago with the command of words he only seems to have in these circumstances, on a camping trip with some of their friends when they were both drunk off their asses. Pulled him close with one arm crushing them together, watched Duke jerk off and whispered in his ear dirty enough to make him screw his eyes shut and come in what felt like about thirty seconds. Duke swallows hard thinking about it and lightens his grip because he wants Nathan to go first and if he goes in that mental direction too much longer that’s not going to be an option. He opens his mouth to demand the picture again, more to distract himself and slow down a little than anything else, but all he gets out is Nathan’s name and barely that. He’s about to try again when Nathan covers his hand with his own, gripping his wrist tight. “Ok.”

He should probably questions Nathan’s ability to know exactly what smart ass remark is going to come out of his mouth before he does himself, but instead he happily sinks down on his cock again. That’s just about all it takes, and a few moments later Nathan comes hard, before he has a chance to pull back again or even think about it. That’s the last thing that crosses his mind for a long time as he comes with one last shaky flick of his wrist. He sinks down against Nathan, his face pressed to the crook of his neck and they listen to each other’s breathing slow down and go quiet. Aside from the obvious this is the part he likes best out of all the time they spend together. He doesn’t need to make any excuses for being this close. Maybe it would be ok other times too, but usually one of them will move away and keep at arm’s length until the next time.

He’s almost asleep, carried away on those thoughts, and only realizes it when Nathan says “Duke, it’s almost one-thirty.”

“Who cares,” he mutters into his shoulder. The dark behind his eyelids keeps a tight grip on him, trying to drag him back into unconscious. It’s not quite a Machiavellian plan to fall asleep in his bed, but if he just happens to be here tomorrow morning before he leaves, well, that’s ok too. Nathan needs his plans screwed up once in a while or he gets obnoxious.

“I have to be up in four hours.”

“I can be asleep again in four seconds.” It’s not like Duke has dutiful parents waiting up for him. “We can get breakfast. I’ll see you off.”

Nathan shakes his head, pushing him off but not hard enough to feel like a rejection. “It’s going to be really early and I’m just going to have to grab the last of my stuff and go. I’ll call you when I get there.”

Duke doesn’t want to get angry about it because he’s done a really good job of not getting angry about any of it so far and he wants Nathan leave with that in mind. He knows he doesn’t have a stake in any of it, not really. Nathan has a right to go do whatever the hell he wants and it’s not like he didn’t stick around for an entire year longer than he had to. It’s not like Orono is half way across the country or like he forgets choking out encouragement through mentions of California and Oregon. At the end of the day, Nathan is his friend and that’s it. That’s how they both like it, he tells himself for the hundredth time. “I don’t get why it’s such a big deal.”

“I never said it was.” He turned away, straightening his clothes and looking anywhere but at Duke. “You’re a pain in the ass in the morning. I have a ton of stuff I still have to pack up and it’s a long drive. And it’s going to be weird enough with the chief glaring a hole in my back, telling me not to ask him for money and if I’m lucky I can have my room back when I flunk out. I’m going to have enough shit to deal with without saying goodbye to you in front of him.”

It’s pretty obvious that that last bit wasn’t supposed to actually come out and he isn’t sure he should acknowledge it at all. “I didn’t think.”

“I know. You usually don’t.” He has a look that forecasts something awkward being said badly and with a few curses and Duke knows enough to just wait and let him formulate whatever mangled idea he wants to express. It’s not that Nathan is dense or inarticulate, but he doesn’t put things into words unless he has to. Which is ok sometimes, because they can usually figure out what the other is thinking from years of experience. Other times, not so much and Duke’s patience wears as seconds drag on.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I’m an idiot sometimes. I’ll go, and you can call me when you get there. Like you said.”

Nathan shakes his head, but stays silent. Finally he says, as if they were talking about nothing important at all, “If I stayed, would you…would you want me to stay?”

It feels out of left field, but Duke knows it’s been hanging between them for a while now, the fact that Nathan’s last day here was coming faster and faster until it was a reality and the unnamed alternatives to that. The stupid thing is that he doesn’t want Nathan to stay, not at all. There is nothing in him cruel enough to make Nathan stay here when he knows how much he hates it, surrounded by people who never forget. He wants to go with him, but not to state college two hours from home. There was nothing stopping him from applying himself and going on his own terms without once having to say why. But he knows exactly how that will play out – he would get through a semester, maybe a year, eventually drop out and either ruin it for Nathan or screw things up between them somehow when he gets bored and fidgety. It’s not like staying in Haven is his big plan for the future, but neither is getting some random degree and sitting in an office eight hours a day for the next forty years. He has no idea what he wants to do beyond what they’ve been doing together since the end of junior year and he has even less of an idea how to express that to Nathan without sounding like a selfish jerk.

“You’ve been waiting for this forever,” he begins, and it’s wrong right away. It sounds like he’s ducking the responsibility of saying no, and of course that’s much too much like something he would normally do.

“I shouldn’t have said anything.” Just like that Nathan is closed off again, compartmentalizing and stowing everything that gets under his skin. “It’s stupid, don’t worry about it.”

“It’s not.” Usually he’s better at this. There isn’t much Duke can’t talk his way into, out of, or at least around, but Nathan always proves the exception because he doesn’t want to do that with him. Somehow he winds up tongue tied and stupid because a lie isn’t acceptable, but the truth is uncomfortable and better left silently understood between them. If it was at all ok to say _I want to be with you, wherever,_ then he already would have said it. He would have said it last August and saved himself a year where everything felt like the last time between them and he wracked his brain trying to think of a way to say goodbye without actually having to do it. “It’s not stupid. Staying here without giving it a chance is pretty stupid though. I can’t ask you to do that.”

The shaky look of determination on Nathan’s face breaks his heart and makes it jump all at the same time. He wanted this, desperate for any little confirmation that he hasn’t been carrying his stupid torch all alone. He can’t say yes, no matter how much he wants to; Duke knows he’s selfish and he can be short-sighted, but it’s too much to ask.

“You could.” Nathan’s voice sounds soft, fragile between them like it could get away from him and break, letting out too much. “I don’t mind.”

“You would, eventually.”

“You could try being like everybody else for once in your life and just go too.”

It’s not the first time Nathan has suggested this, more or less casually. Duke thought about it for a while and tried to picture himself going to classes, getting whatever degree required the least amount of effort and attendance. It seemed ludicrous no matter how many times he tried to imagine it and the only reason he ever came up with for going was because it would be an easy way to stay with Nathan. The thought of it makes him twitchy and bored, like treading water forever just so he could look at the shore. Some of his reluctance is stupid pride that won’t let him cave and be herded along with everyone he knows into the beginning of a life he doesn’t want. More importantly, he knows he would ruin it for Nathan. He doesn’t have a patient or stoic bone in his body.

“I’m not doing four more years of classes I don’t care about. It’s like high school all over again.” He doesn’t want to remind Nathan that two thirds of Haven High School ends up at MU, and it’s not like he won’t figure that out for himself sooner or later. “This is your thing. You’re going to wind up hating me if I take it away from you.”

“It’s not going to be like that. It’s going to be different away from here.” He shifts back just far enough to look Duke in the eye and his expression suggests that this was already settled for him. “Besides, it’s four years, not forever. It doesn’t even have to be four years. We’ll figure it out.”

“Slow down for a second, ok? It does have to be four years unless you think college dropout is an awesome line on your resume. But there are breaks, summer and Christmas. I’ll come out on the weekends sometimes. You’ll come back here.” He hates being the voice of reason, but he doesn’t want to be the one that drags Nathan back here before he’s ready or makes him stay out of some misplaced sense of obligation. More than that, he can’t stop wondering if things won’t change once they’re apart, if Nathan won’t come to his senses and realize how far into this they are. Duke needs him to choose this for himself, or else he knows he’s always going to wonder. “If you want to, I mean. You might change your mind, you know. You might like being on your own.” He tries to sound lighthearted, but the underlying worry is obvious.

“You might too,” he shrugs, not quite petulant but certainly approaching it.

“No,” Duke says, cursing himself a little for how quickly it comes and the certainty in his voice. He doesn’t mean to keep going, but Nathan makes him more than a little stupid. Besides, he’s always been too scared to say it and he doesn’t know when he will get the chance again. “If it was different here I would have asked you to stay already.”

The smile that breaks over Nathan’s face is worth whatever that admission might have cost him in anxiety. “Yeah?”

Duke wants to kiss him again and show Nathan he’s serious in ways he knows he can’t put into words. But he knows if he does it’s going to be harder to go, and if he doesn’t go his resolve is going to crumble down into nothing. Instead he just nods, hoping all of those things are obvious to Nathan without having to say them, somehow. He rises and offers Nathan a hand, pulling him up too. “I should go. You’re going to call when you get there, right?”

He doesn’t answer right away, twisting his arms around Duke in a hug that threatens to crack ribs. Nathan is wiry, but he’s solid and strong. “Yeah, as soon as I get settled in.”

They exchange the usual reminders about driving careful and not doing anything the other wouldn’t do, each claiming that gives the other more leeway. Duke honestly doesn’t want to think too much about that. He doesn’t think Nathan is going to start picking up girls the minute he gets there, but he can’t ask him not to either. There’s no good rubric to figure out what changed between them tonight and no painless way to get Nathan to clarify it, or even a good reason to believe he could if he wanted to.

He lets himself out, sneaking past the living room where the chief is stretched out in his recliner, the only light coming from the TV screen. His hand is on the doorknob when he hears “He all ready to head out tomorrow?”

“I think so, yeah.” He’s not sure if he can stay or go. Duke’s never loved being interrogated by the chief, especially not about Nathan. “Are you going to see him off tomorrow?”

“No. I’ve got an early start myself.” There’s a suggestion the pause that Duke’s not allowed to leave yet, and all of a sudden he tightens up, worried that the chief heard them, that he’s about to get a lecture about the evils of the gay lifestyle or the disrespectful nature of going down on the chief’s son right under his nose. “You’re going to keep in touch with him Duke?”

It’s not really a question. “Sure. Of course I will.”

“Good.” He assumes he’s dismissed because no other commands issue forth, so he shuts the door quietly behind him and bolts off the porch. It’s not beyond the realm of believability that Nathan’s father would chase him out into the street and take him to task for some real or imagined failing on his son’s part. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

The walk home isn’t a long one, but he takes his time. Fall is creeping up on the last days of summer and the sky is brilliant this time of year. They can talk shit for hours about how much they hate Haven, how everybody is a backwards hick and they can’t wait to get out, but Duke has to admit that there’s a part of him that loves it. The air smells like salt and seaweed and the perpetual stink of rotting wood and it’s home whether either of them like it or not.

The picture is tucked inside his jacket pocket – Nathan thinks he sneaked it in and Duke saw no reason to tell him otherwise.

* * *

  
 _December 1995_

Hannah Driscoll is pretty in a sweet kind of way. She’s always smiling an anxious little smile, like she’s nervous or hopeful or maybe both. She’s pretty in the way that gets to guys like Nathan, Duke realizes, kind of innocent looking and always worried that her father is going to tear in a little drunk and shouting fire and brimstone, embarrassing her half to death. She needs somebody to save her, to make a big scene and tell her father off before taking her away from Haven and never looking back. He knows she’s not anywhere near as innocent as she looks, at least not according to Nathan, but if she has any idea that information was shared she’s certainly not showing it now. She seems comfortable going through the motions of conversation with him, but so far all they’ve talked about is Nathan. It’s a little awkward to say the least.

“So have you talked to him lately?” She’s clutching a bottle of beer that he knows she hasn’t touched and won’t. Every so often she glances around her, scanning everyone nervously as if someone might rat her out and tell daddy she’s been acting like a living breathing human being. She knows everyone there, mostly people who are either back in town for the holiday break or who just never managed to find their way out, but it’s not as if her father lets her out much. Which is probably why she’s still carrying a torch for Nathan, aside from the obvious. “Does he like school?”

“Yeah, I think so.” In reality, Duke isn’t so sure. They haven’t spoken in a few weeks because final exams, papers, and group projects are all Nathan thinks about. What Duke had dismissed as a nerdy, but completely normal, devotion to school work in high school somehow turned into what seemed like complete overkill in college. Nathan is always apologizing for rambling about school, about statistics and Platonic forms and what a pain in the ass it is to conjugate _falloir, vouloir, avoir_. Duke is perfectly content to listen to him talk about it, helping him with his French and commiserating about how stupid the allegory of the cave sounds, but he keeps apologizing anyway. In all honesty, Nathan doesn’t have to work as hard as he does, but it doesn’t seem like his work is what’s bothering him.

When they talk it’s not like being together; Nathan’s got a bad habit of long silences over the phone and Duke tries to fill them up with stories about everyone they know, often heavily edited and embellished. Most of it seems stupid now and he wonders if it was ever very different or why they even like half of those people. Worse, he’s beginning to wonder why any of them put up with him anyway, since he knows he’s had a shitty attitude ever since Nathan left. Nathan is likewise convinced that most of what happens at school isn’t especially interesting and there is an odd lack of information about who he spends his days with beyond his roommate. The roommate is the bane of Duke’s existence, a dedicated homophobe who makes sure Nathan knows his feelings on that subject the first time they meet and a then never leaves the room for anything but class, as if he suspects something gay might manifest itself there without his watchful eye. Consequently any ideas Duke might have had about phone sex are squashed immediately by Barry the roommate. Even more frustrating is that he hasn’t really been able to get out to Orono since the first three day weekend of the semester. That had been the last time he saw Nathan face to face, since his ancient Escort died a noble death on the side of Route One right outside of Machias and he didn’t want to dip into the money he was saving to replace it. He can fix just about anything, but the car was a lost cause. He was _thisclose_ to asking Nathan to come home, but he didn’t feel right about it when they were supposed to be giving the distance a fair chance. Part of that bargain is letting him have a life on his own. The dead car was like a particularly shitty reminder from the universe that this had been his idea.

It had been good to see him for that weekend though, so much so that Duke didn’t utter a single sound of complaint about having to sleep on the floor to avoid Barry’s wrath, no matter how appealing the narrow confines of a single bed seemed after all that distance. They spent the first half of that Friday night catching up, Nathan telling him about his classes, an alcoholic professor who talks to his tie, Barry’s problems with comic book girls and masturbation, and how the chief sent him a hundred bucks in a blank card, apropos of nothing and without even a signature. For a while he thought maybe that was all it was going to be, and he was prepared to be ok with that. Not like it, sure, but be ok with having just Nathan’s presence, his voice and his crooked half smile. But later when they drove out to one of the parks overlooking the town and made out like they were kids sneaking around their parents’ houses again Duke was absolutely convinced Nathan missed him as much as he was missed himself.

He still calls home faithfully, but Duke can’t let go of the absence of stories about the people he was meeting. He’d met some of them over Labor Day weekend, a guy who lived down the hall, a few people from his chemistry class, and a girl he studied with from his French class who seemed a few steps away from going full on Hannah Driscoll on Nathan. In high school he never hurt for friends so it’s hard to imagine that’s the case at school either. Duke knows it suggests another reason for his reticence but he tries not to dwell on it. After all, he was the one who told him to go. Now he wonders if the long slow process of flunking out of college would have been anywhere near as bad as being here by himself. Everything he used to like about Haven turns wrong without Nathan and although there are other lots of other people, but there isn’t anyone else he wants to talk to or touch or just be next to. It’s like they’ve switched places since they were kids and now he’s the one perpetually uncomfortable here, painfully aware that something is missing and he’s just a little outside of everyone else.

“Do you know if he’s met anybody yet?” Her voice is a little too hopeful and it’s obvious that she’s not over that night they never made it to the prom. She’s been carrying that torch for years without encouragement and shows no signs of giving it up now. “I was just curious…”

“No idea.” He gives Hannah his biggest smile, hoping to find his way out of the conversation before they end up spending the rest of the night drawing hearts around Nathan’s yearbook picture and writing their names and his in the margins. He doesn’t want to talk about this, least of all with her. The only thing he wants to do is drink enough to fall asleep easily for once, and that’s the only way he can excuse twisting the knife in Hannah a little bit. “Wouldn’t surprise me though. I mean it’s not like he’s got anything here to stop him.”

Hannah looks crestfallen, enough so that he knows he should apologize. Knowing and doing are two different things, however, and he can’t be bothered since she’s the one who brought him up and made them both miserable anyway. Then almost as quickly as her face crumpled she perks up in about half a second, grinning over Duke’s shoulder with enough enthusiasm that he wonders if she hasn’t been drinking more than he thinks. He hardly has time to process the change in her as a cold hand snakes under his shirt where Hannah won’t notice and around his waist, fingers like ice skimming inside the waist of his jeans and tightening on his hip. He whips around only to find himself face to face with Nathan, his cheeks flushed with cold and wearing an idiot grin.

“What wouldn’t surprise you?”

He doesn’t care that Nathan pulled one over on him or that he didn’t bother to call before he left like he promised. Duke yanks him into a hug that lasts a little too long, relieved that he holds on just as tight and just as long. He relinquishes his grip only when he realizes that Hannah is still standing there twisting her bottle in her hands and looking slightly confused.

“It doesn’t surprise me you’re the kind of asshole who doesn’t call to say he’s coming home.” Ok, so maybe it bugs him a little more than he realized. “When did you get here?”

“Five minutes ago.” Nathan raises his hands, keys in one and an unopened beer in the other. “I haven’t even been home yet, honest.”

Hannah makes a little sound, clearing her throat and looking pained again. Nathan finally lets him go and embraces her with a lot less enthusiasm, although it seems to be lost on her. “It’s good to see you Hannah.”

“We were just talking about you!” she gushes. Duke would love to hate her a little but it’s impossible. She’s too sincere, so honestly excited to see Nathan and as embarrassing as it is he knows exactly how she feels. It only seems fair to let her have him for a while considering that Duke almost made her cry. They exchange some pleasantries about Nathan’s schoolwork (he’s probably going to declare a sociology major) and her classes (she wants to go away too, but her father insists she keep living at home). Duke is just as glad they’re talking among themselves, because he can’t stop looking at Nathan and cataloging the differences.

“Do you think you’re going to go to college, Duke?” Hannah asks politely, so clearly not interested in the answer that he could probably tell her to get bent and she wouldn’t notice.

“I don’t think so,” he answers, not bothering to tear his eyes away from Nathan because it’s not as if she isn’t doing exactly the same. “I guess I’ll figure out over the holidays.”

Duke thinks that the universe must be on his side tonight, because after a few minutes of awkward conversation one of Hannah’s friends from church stumbles toward them bubbling up drunken giggles. Neither he or Nathan know the girl very well and watch in amusement as she drags a clearly regretful Hannah away. They’re both quiet for a moment until Nathan laces his fingers through Duke’s and leads him outside away from the glow of the sodium lights around the McShaw’s driveway across the yard toward the dark surrounding their shed. It’s quiet as the grave, stillness only broken by their footsteps on the snow and bursts of laughter from inside the house. Nathan pushes him back far enough to study him, maddeningly close and too far away.

Roughly fifty years pass before he says “You cut your hair.”

Duke cups Nathan’s face and pulls him forward, kissing him hard enough to make up for four months of stilted phone calls and asshole roommates. His skin is cold but his mouth is warm as he returns the kiss, tongue grazing Duke’s bottom lip and sneaking inside to search insistently, reasserting himself. Finally he sags against him, their foreheads pressed together and eyes closed, sharing white clouds of ragged breath.

“Missed you,” Duke manages. He can’t quite let him go, stroking his cheek with his thumb while his other hand has sunk to his hip as if it were possible to get him closer. “Should have made you come back more.”

“Yeah, you should have.” Nathan smoothes his fingers over the back of Duke’s head like he’s looking for the messy waves that used to be there. “When did you cut your hair?”

“I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago?” He can’t help but be amused at Nathan’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “Does the chief know you’re back yet?”

“No. Can I stay with you? I don’t want to go home, at least not now.” There’s a story there, something that takes the edge of contentment out of his voice and Duke is about to ask when the shadow is gone as quickly as it came. “Unless you don’t –“

Duke doesn’t wait for him to finish and takes off back toward the house, Nathan laughing as he trails behind. “Let’s go.”

“Ok…”

“Everybody wants to see you Nate, so you better get that out of the way now.” The look he gives Nathan is meant to be suggestive, but even Duke knows it’s ridiculous, excited and relieved and horny as hell and just plain happy. “Because you’re not getting out again for a while.”

Apparently Nathan has no problem with that plan, because he speeds up his walk, fishing keys out of his pocket.  


* * *

The windows are dark and the driveway is empty when they pull in, and while it’s not surprising Duke is grateful anyway. It’s bitter cold outside and he’s fumbling with the key, and having Nathan pressed against his back like a second skin isn’t helping much either. His mouth feels like summer sun against the cold and for a moment Duke entertains the notion that this is worth hypothermia. Finally the key clicks in the lock and they’re inside dropping a trail of coats, gloves and boots dripping dirty snow.

Once they’re upstairs and shut in his room he has a moment to wish he could’ve planned for this and made it different somehow, done something to show that it matters. Nathan is obviously indifferent to the dirty laundry and unmade bed, trying to kiss him and pull his sweater over his head at the same time. For a couple of minutes they’re mostly getting in each other’s way, knuckles crashing into each other, kisses that don’t quite connect or mouths meeting hard enough to bruise and he doesn’t care because even with this rushed, awkward progress it’s Nathan stealing his breath and sinking his fingers too hard into his hip. Duke realizes at some point that they’ve stumbled into his bed, too caught up in the contact to really appreciate anything else other than Nathan staring down at him and clumsy fingers fighting the button on his jeans. Then Nathan’s working his cock, breathing something about how much he’s missed him hot against Duke’s mouth, and there’s nothing else in the room, nothing else in his perception at all. Nathan does this to him every time, winds him up hard enough that he can’t think, and doesn’t want to, about anything that isn’t him. Of course, this is also when he has to admit that all those weird transitions between them and how they got here aren’t coincidences and it seems obvious why Nathan gets him like this, makes him feel stupid and desperate like there couldn’t ever be anybody else who even comes close. Little as he likes to admit it nothing between them is accidental, at least not for him. Nathan is the only thing he’s ever planned out or worked for in his life.

When Nathan breaks off and pulls back Duke leans in to follow him instinctively and it takes him a second to process the hand flat against his chest, pushing him back just a little. He’s circling Duke’s pulse with his thumb, giving him a second to realize how hard it’s beating, just out of synch with the harsh pull of his breath. For one moment under the spell of that touch he wonders if his heart is going to beat out from under bone and skin into Nathan’s hand. It’s not like Nathan is doing any better, the fingers stretched across his breastbone practically vibrating heat and nervous energy. Duke knows if he says anything it’s going to be an incoherent mess, so he waits, just watching Nathan watch him.

“I missed you,” he says again. This time when their mouths meet it starts off softer, but the frantic energy is right at the edge, crackling between them and threatening to erode the boundary of caution that’s always been there. His face is flushed and he opens his mouth once without any sound coming out, suddenly looking anywhere but Duke’s face. He finally mutters something, but it’s unintelligible and this time it’s Duke that pulls away.

“What?”

“When I was at school. I bought lube.”

Duke wants to laugh at him, just about die laughing to be honest, because he looks like a worried little boy who knows he’s done something very bad and not someone who is almost twenty and tangled up in another naked adult. Of course, that would probably not be entirely in his best interest at this point, because nobody cares about getting you off after you laugh in their face over their attempt to get you off. It’s not exactly the easiest thing he’s ever done, but he swallows that laughter and sets what he hopes is an appropriately serious look on his face. “Ok.”

“Cause I thought maybe.” Nathan’s face is buried in the crook of his neck, words punctuated with the press of his mouth. “I thought we could, you know. If you want to.”

All of a sudden it’s not all that funny anymore. It’s not the first time they’ve thought about this. Obviously it’s not. Sometimes Duke thinks about it four times a day and only half of those are masturbation fodder. They tried it once, but both of them were over-eager and inexperienced enough to think that enthusiasm would suffice, so the whole thing became a comedy of errors. Really uncomfortable errors. Whenever Duke brought it up after that Nathan balked, both at the idea of it being bad for him again or putting himself in that position. But it’s clear that he’s serious about it now and even if Duke had any real reservations the look on his face would probably have won him over anyway.

Duke gets as much of a grip as he can in Nathan’s hair and brings their mouths together again, the most coherent consent he's capable of. Any hesitation he had left erased when their cocks rub against each other and Nathan lets out a soft whimper, rolling his hips down into Duke’s and echoing the first rush of sparks shooting through him. “Get it,” he pants into Nathan’s mouth, words followed by his tongue pushing inside.

Nathan is gone and returned in a second, just enough time to for Duke to appreciate that he came prepared and that like everything else, he’s been planning this for a while. The thought is driven out of his mind as slicked fingers slide down the length of his cock, thumb stroking his balls for a second and then the tentative touch against his hole, uncertain pressure first and then working in slow and steady.

“Duke?” His voice is soft, more like breathing really, and Duke opens his eyes without even realizing he’s been squeezing them shut about as tight as he’s gripping Nathan’s arm. It shouldn’t be a big deal; he hasn’t been a virgin for a long time and neither has Nathan, and he’s not naive enough to imagine what they’ve been doing doesn’t count as sex. This feels different though, bigger. He takes a deep breath and wills every tensed tendon and muscle in his body to relax, more or less successful. It’s weird, a little uncomfortable at first and just strange to think about another person being inside him. But it’s not bad weird, and the second finger actually makes it better, a fluid twist and open, twist and close pushing and stretching. “Is this ok?”

“Yeah, it’s—” But he can’t finish the thought because Nathan’s fingers ease in deeper as he relaxes and then he’s hitting just the right place so that this feels exactly like it’s supposed to, slow burn as a backdrop for fracturing explosion, surging up through him and turning his insides to a web of tangled wires. He throws back his head and lets out the most undignified sound he’s ever made, straining down on Nathan’s fingers, desperate to get him as deep as he can. There’s a tiny part of him that thinks he should be more self-conscious than this, but even if he had the self control necessary for that it would be impossible between them anyway.

Nathan’s watching him, not just out of concern anymore. His fingers keep up their fluid movement, angling inside and stretching Duke open and somehow his mouth is everywhere, sucking a deep red mark into his throat, ghosting over his nipples, tongue tracing his hipbone, lips pressed to the soft skin inside his thigh. Duke tries but he can’t get himself together or form words that don’t sound like begging, can’t trust that he can control his hands while Nathan’s fingers twist and push inside him. Still he reaches for him anyway, hand skimming down his stomach before grasping his cock and stroking, long slow motion that torments more than it satisfies. Nathan exhales sharply but gains possession of himself again quickly, changing the rhythm of his movements to match Duke’s. He’s watching wide eyed, lips parted and wet, like he’s fascinated by the way they fit together like this and Duke can see him wondering what it would be like if their places were reversed. The smooth thrust of his hand starts to go erratic and jumpy, and suddenly he pushes Duke’s hand away, pinning his wrist.

“Stop,” he grinds out, shaking his head and tightening his grip. “You keep doing that and I’m done.”

The depth in his voice is almost enough to set Duke off too, but he wills himself still. “Come on, I’m ready.”

Nathan bends to kiss him, moving his fingers in a wicked twist that makes Duke just about jump out of his skin. “You sure?” He snags Duke’s bottom lip between his teeth, tugging gently before his tongue soothes over.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he says, sharper than he intended. But Nathan smirks at him as he grabs for the condom he left on the side table, knocking everything else out of his way to crash on the floor. Despite how pleased with himself he obviously is his fingers stutter at the wrapper and Duke pulls it out of his hands. He starts to protest again but Duke shoots him a look. “Close your eyes and think about church.”

“Yeah, right.” Nathan holds it together as he rolls on the condom, but his teeth are sunk into his lip and he actually does close his eyes as Duke slicks him with lube. He wraps one hand around Duke’s arm and yanks him up close and Duke wraps his legs around him, enclosing him. Nathan’s poised at his entrance, the head of his cock nudging, begging admittance, but he holds back, teasing his hole with the tip. “If you want to stop –“

“If you don’t do it I’m going to fucking die, Nate.”

That’s encouragement enough and then Nathan’s pushing him open, one hand braced on his hip. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, and it doesn’t not hurt because his cock is a lot thicker than his fingers. But it feels like splitting open in the best way, hard heat pulsing up inside him one excruciating inch at a time. Nathan takes his time, slipping in deep until he’s nestled inside Duke, the bite of his fingers outside mirroring the burn inside. His cock brushes against that bundle of nerves, not quite hitting it at first but maddeningly close and Duke buries his face in the curve of Nathan’s neck and shoulder, sinks his teeth into soft skin to keep from crying out.

After what seems like an eternity Nathan pulls back and thrusts in deep, the slow drag and insistent push making Duke’s breath catch in his throat. He’s got one hand cupping Nathan’s neck, his fingers slipping across sweaty skin, the other on his ass like he can pull him in deeper, hold him closer. Nathan is covering him with wet, open mouthed kisses and a low stream of words Duke doesn’t even try to understand, everything focused on Nathan moving inside him. It’s like everything is suspended, his ability to think or speak gone as Nathan’s cock sinks home and he can’t do anything but tighten and relax around him, ride out the twisting in his stomach that pitches higher and higher with each stroke.

“Duke, I can’t…” Nathan’s mouth is still open, but there’s no sound coming out and he’s thrusting into him harder and arrhythmic, whatever control he had over his movements rapidly deteriorating. “I can’t,” he says again as he moves to fist Duke’s cock, his hand unsteady around him. There’s too much disparate motion inside and out and a few seconds later Nathan’s eyes lock onto his and he drives in hard one last time before he comes. That last thrust shoves Duke over the edge as well and he shoots over Nathan’s hand and onto his belly, hips twitching between the last spasm of Nathan’s cock and hand on his own.

They stay slack against each other and fused together for a moment, motionless except for unsteady breathing and Duke carding his fingers through sweaty strands of Nathan’s hair. Untangling limbs seems like way too much work and he doesn’t mind the press of Nathan’s weight or the sweat-sticky mess between them.

“Ok?” Nathan asks, as if there’s any question about it.

“Yeah. Way better than ok.”

Finally Nathan pulls out and gets up to toss the condom in the trash and Duke shivers at the sudden influx of cold air on his sweat slick skin. He’s only gone a few seconds, but he nestles into Duke’s arms like it’s been much longer. “For the record, thinking about church? Doesn’t help at all.”

“Sorry,” he laughs. Nathan’s damp hair tickles his nose and he breathes sweat and soap in deep. All of the rigidity that usually rests in his shoulders is bled out and he’s completely slack against Duke, eyes closed, lashes fluttering against his cheek as he drifts off, lips just barely parted. He looks totally unlike himself, the hard edge of defenses gone and it would be really, really easy to be in love with him like this. It’s easy to believe that would be ok now. He’s beautiful.

“I have to tell you something.” His voice, thick and sleepy, startles Duke out of the fuzzy grey haze he hadn’t realized he was falling into. “It’s important.”

“What is it?”

“Tomorrow.” It’s obvious that Nathan is only barely with him at this point, like he’s not even completely aware of what he’s saying. “About leaving.”

“Going back to school?” It doesn’t really sound like that, but Nathan doesn’t respond, either because sleep has pulled him under or he just doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s sealed off and bricked up most of the time, even with him, and just like always he’s not going to give anything away until he’s good and ready. It should be infuriating, but Duke’s spent his whole life learning to be patient with Nathan’s screwed up way of expressing himself. A few more hours, most of the spent unconscious, aren’t the end of the world.

* * *

  
Whatever was so important the night before doesn’t come up in the morning, so Duke keeps his mouth shut with an unsettling amount of effort. Unfortunately it was a lot easier to be patient when his spine felt liquefied and he didn’t want to think about moving an inch for at least three months. Now it’s needling at him, pricking at the back of his thoughts as they creep around to avoiding waking up his mother while she sleeps off third shift. Most of the time keeping his mouth shut and being patient does wonders to coax things out of Nathan; the epic volume of restraint Duke requires to not be difficult is easily apparent because they both know being a mouthy pain in the ass with no filter is his natural state. Despite that Duke manages not to bring it up and instead makes pancakes like every time Nathan stays over, lets him have the first shower and still nothing more interesting comes up than Nathan announcing that he wants to go to the beach. In December, which makes him wonder if maybe he’s been a little too agreeable.

They don’t really talk on the drive out. Nathan seems content in the quiet and Duke is too preoccupied with getting it out of him to actually verbalize anything. It’s a miserable day, weak sunshine breaking through clouds that are obviously threatening a storm, and it’s only getting worse by the time they’re getting out of the truck. There’s something eerie about the expanse of snow that runs from the empty parking lot out to the water like a blank stretch of white bleeding into white with invisible boundaries. The sky is an ominous shade of greenish grey and the water practically looks angry, crashing onto the shore in dirty, frothy waves. In the summer it would be packed with tourists, kids building lopsided sand castles, housewives with their noses buried in romance novels and bored teenagers looking for some kind of trouble. Duke likes it better this time of year when there’s something hard edged and almost mean about the landscape and everything smells like ice and salt instead of sunscreen and fast food. There’s a weathered sign half covered in snow warning swimmers that no lifeguard is on duty and he can’t help but remember his parents talking in hushed voices about the twenty or so people who walked into water that looked just like this one Christmas Eve back when the Troubles weren’t something everyone ignored or talked about as if they never happened. Maybe they just didn’t see the sign.

They lean against the fence that separates the parking area from the beach while Nathan stares out at the water like he hasn’t seen it in years.

“You really missed Haven that much.” What he wants to hear, of course, is that Nathan missed him that much, that he thinks about it all the time too, that there are all kinds of crazy stupid things he wants to say but feels like he can’t. He wants some indication, even a tiny one, that it’s been the same for them both all this time. Normally he likes Nathan’s economy of words but every so often he’d like a profusion.

Nathan shoots him the side eye and pulls his coat tighter around himself. “Some of it. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Kind of.” The side eye intensifies to intolerable levels. “I’m just saying you couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here and now we’re at the beach in December because you miss home.”

“I miss the water. There’s a difference.”

“Right.”

“Duke, could you shut up for five minutes?” There’s no heat in his words, just the indication that he’s going to say what he has to say when he feels like it. “You were right, you know.”

“Of course I was. About what?”

“It is just like high school. I know five of them just in my dorm. That’s not even close to all of them. Do you have any idea how many people from here I see every day?” It’s a rhetorical question and he already knows the answer anyway. Whenever Nathan talked about wanting to go to school he knew it really wasn’t for the sake of college itself. Some of it was about getting out of town for a while, to see what it was like to live someplace that was more than a pretty tourist trap. But it’s the people, not the place, that make this hell for him. Duke knows it all too well because when they were kids he was an enthusiastic participant in that hell.

“Is that why I never hear about anybody but Barry? Who is a fucking asshole, by the way,” he can’t resist adding.

He nods, the disappointment written plainly on his face. “I was there a week and everybody knew everything about me. Everything.”

It’s likely an exaggeration, but it also probably feels real enough to Nathan. He doesn’t talk about the Troubles and he won’t stick around if anybody else starts to either. There’s a lot that Duke just doesn’t know about them, mostly because no one in his family was afflicted, but he does remember all too well when Nathan stopped feeling anything. Unfortunately for Nathan, so does everyone else. There’s sort of a legend surrounding the kid who couldn’t feel, and an expectation that he answer weird questions – could he feel heat? cold? pressure? did he get headaches? did it all go away at once or little by little? was it like pins and needles? was it like being cold? what happened to his other senses? did he do something to make it happen? And of course, there was always a persistent rumor that he never really was able to feel again, that he just got better at faking it with practice and nobody could be sure what went on between Nathan and his nervous system, as if it was anyone’s business but his own. There was a distinct contingent of idiots who seemed to think he might be playing an epic joke on them, tricking them into thinking he was normal when he had no right to do so. He was ten when it came back and as far as Duke’s concerned, that should be the end of it. Of course, it isn’t, because nothing ever ends here. There’s not a whole lot to talk about in Haven except petty crime and the weird stuff that happened years ago.

Worse than the story that Nathan never started to feel again is the speculation about when the Troubles will come back and, if they do, what will happen to him then. Most of the worry is benevolent, concern about when poor lovable Nathan is going to be cosmically screwed again and how it will ruin the rest of what should be an otherwise unremarkable life. Some of it is speculation that once someone stops being normal they can’t really start again, something unrecoverable lost forever. But the undercurrent of all the gossip and poorly hidden queries is the same. Nathan Wuornos is a time bomb, a tragedy on an indefinite timer, and everybody is waiting to see just what happens when the detonator sets off the charge.

Plus it’s not as if leftover gossip is the worst of what happened to Nathan because of the Troubles. Things changed for him when people found out; parents weren’t sure they wanted their kids around him and kids who were his friends started seeing him less as another kid and more as a human target. It seemed harmless at the time – after all, he didn’t feel anything, so who did their jokes really hurt? And Nathan, being Nathan, took all of it with the same stoicism he applied to everything else, trying to laugh it off but usually walking away stone faced, packing it all away into a mental filing system that hid the bad stuff and let him convince himself it just didn’t happen. Eventually things escalated, not because the students of Haven’s elementary school were tiny sociopaths, but because eight and nine year olds are not generally known for their sensitivity. It’s part of why Duke is less than thrilled to be here, because it was a day like this one when a bunch of Nathan’s supposed friends tried to goad him out into icy water up to his chest with a combination of taunts and threats.

Usually Duke would say he doesn’t really remember what happened back then, why people scaled back their torment of Nathan after that or how they wound up being real friends again. It’s one of the few stories from back then that actually would make him look good, since he was the one who ran and got an adult. He's not sure Nathan knows that and he's not ever going to bring it up; it feels like it would come across as making excuses more than anything else. The truth is he remembers everything about that day, more than he suspects Nathan does – his mother pissed at missing work, the glove he lost somewhere on the road and never found, icy cold fingers twisting in his own afterward. He had been sick and his mother kept him from going out to play that day, so he had to wait until she was asleep to sneak out of the house much later than normal. By the time he found his friends they were already well engaged in what could have been the last prank they ever played on Nathan. He doesn’t wonder about how it would have turned out had he been there all morning, and not because he imagines that his better nature would have prevented the whole mess in the first place. Duke is self aware enough to know that he was an awful kid, the kind of bully who got away with most of it because he could charm teachers and his parents were too busy or too indifferent to care what he got up to unless he was bothering them.

He and Nathan had been playground friends before, like everyone else, by circumstance rather than choice. But something about Nathan’s inability to feel pain fascinated him in the worst way, made him want to poke at it and see how it worked. Some of it was just childish curiosity, but for the most part there aren’t any real excuses; he was a bully and he had a lot of asshole little friends who were just as bad. There isn’t really any getting around it. If he had been there, it probably would have been him instigating. If anything, he was always a little sneakier and a little more adventurous than the kids who were worried about getting rounded so it probably would have been worse. He can’t even claim good intentions made him run for an adult. He and Geoff had snuck out to watch them pulling the bodies from the Christmas drowning out of the water, the ones they could find, and they had shown up in every nightmare he’d had for a year. There was no doubt in his mind that Nathan would show up in there as well, blue lipped and white eyed like something more ocean than human, and even at nine years old he knew there was no one who would deserve that haunting more.

For a while they were each other’s only friend out of necessity, neither of them entirely sure that the other’s company was preferable to being alone. Duke’s former partners in crime all got in enough trouble for the stunt that it took a while for them to welcome him back with open arms. By the time they did it was evident that he and Nathan were a package deal. After that things never really changed and it was a running joke that to find one of them all you had to do was look in the other’s shadow. They had been inseparable ever since and neither of them ever found a reason to change that.

They don’t talk about it very often. Like anything related to the Troubles, Nathan won’t bring it up and he usually just walks away if someone else does. Duke has tried to apologize a couple of times but it never goes anywhere, either because he doesn’t really know where to start or because Nathan takes off, mentally if not physically. Duke gets it, kind of, because as much as he gets every single other thing about Nathan he knows this is something he can never understand. At the same time, things are different now because it’s been almost ten years and in the interim a lot of other things have changed for Nathan. Like everybody else he grew out of awkward pre-adolescence, but not everybody grows up to be good looking and funny, and that whole tragic past thing never seems to fail to impress the girls they went to high school with no matter how little they cared when it was actually happening. The same kids who made it their mission to torment him are friends now, and they probably even regret treating him that way every once in a while. It’s entirely possible that he just doesn’t think about it anymore, which isn’t that weird – who the hell wants to dwell on elementary school, especially when it was that bad?

The other possibility doesn’t feel anywhere near as good, but it seems a lot more realistic. Nathan seems to have a well inside him, a hidden reserve where everything he doesn’t like or can’t deal with goes. His mother dying was tucked away in there, all the fights with the chief before they just stopped bothering to speak, all the things he hears people say or at least suspects, times Duke knows he’s disappointed him in some way. It all disappears and never surfaces again but he knows it’s all there, that none of it is forgotten and maybe not even all that far from Nathan’s mind at any given time. Which means that every time he brings it up all of it is right there, the stupid coincidence that one of the people responsible for his misery, and maybe the person most responsible, is the same one he spends all his time with, talks to about everything, even lets in every once in a while. What’s worse and seems even more likely is that it’s all there whether he’s offering one of his clumsy apologies or not. He doesn’t really know why Nathan forgave him, why he trusts him or even lets him touch him, but he can’t ask either just in case the answer isn’t the one he wants to hear. If Nathan wants to leave behind everything that made him hate this place, he can’t imagine a way in which that shouldn’t include him. Especially him. Maybe that’s arrogant, the assumption that just because he’s been all about Nathan for as long as he can remember that Nathan must be all about him. Arrogant or not, there aren’t many things that make more sense.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and although Nathan can’t know it, he means for all of it.

“I can’t stay there,” he says, and Duke believes him. “Not just to be the freak show again. I can do that here for free, if I was stupid enough to.”

“So you’re not coming back here either.”

When he doesn’t speak again right away Duke’s heart sinks down into his stomach and stays there, leaden. He knows Nathan like the back of his hand, as well as anyone does, and he can read things on his face that nobody else could see there. Nathan is screwing up his courage to tell him something he doesn’t want to hear. There’s a thinness to his mouth, eyes unfocused so he can feign casualness, like this is no big deal. And Duke kind of hates himself because it is a big deal and it’s his own fault. He had his chance months ago and he blew it because he was scared or he thought Nathan needed him to be the reasonable one, some ill advised combination of the two. He was too stubborn to leave with him and too chicken shit to ask him to stay and now he’s screwed.

It’s not that he doubts the way they feel about each other; that’s the least of his worries. They don’t say it, mostly because Duke’s chicken shit problem extends to that as well and he can’t even imagine Nathan getting out any kind of term of endearment without choking or blushing to death. He likes to think he would have worked up the nerve, eventually, but it doesn’t exactly need to be stated. It’s obvious, to him at least. He has no idea how it isn’t to other people, although he’s eternally grateful that it isn’t. Maybe it’s not exactly the same for Nathan – he can’t be one hundred percent sure without asking and he’d rather swallow his own tongue than initiate that discussion.

But he also knows that all of that is diminished because he’s part of the problem here, another person who knows everything about Nathan and even he’s not immune to wondering about the Troubles and how they’ll come back. They’re always there, crouched in the back of everyone’s mind. Duke never brings it up but Nathan’s not oblivious; if anything, he sees it in people’s faces when it’s not even there. Whether he likes it or not, Duke is enmeshed in that, and if he’s there Nathan is never going to be completely clear of it. The lure of being just like everyone else, without history, is addictive to him.

“No. I can’t.” He looks a little lost, a little helpless, but convicted. “If I stay here I’m going to wind up some kind of freak that never leaves the house because he’s convinced everybody is watching him. I feel like that already.”

“So you’re really leaving.” Duke keeps his tone flat, like they’re making small talk.

“Yeah.” He drags it out like they’re actually talking about crazy people or the weather, like none of it matters much. The silence builds up like snow drifts between them and it doesn’t seem impossible that they could die of hypothermia out here waiting for something to fix this.

Duke waits for him to go on, but he’s used up just about all of his patience and he can’t do it anymore. “And you’re leaving alone.”

The expression on Nathan’s face as he turns toward him isn’t encouraging. “I think so.”

“You think so.” There are a million other things he wants to say, most of them requiring expletives, but he grits his teeth until it hurts to keep from saying them. It wasn’t that long ago he was giving Nathan reassuring speeches about how he had a right, no a responsibility to go out on his own for a while. Of course he knew that speech was mostly bravado, especially after how completely alone he’s felt for the last four months. He hates it and always has, can’t stand his own company uninterrupted most of the time and now Nathan’s telling him, after admitting he missed him just as much, after last night, that he was right all along. Wonderful. “Seems like something you could be sort of sure about.”

“Don’t, ok? Don’t.”

“What?” It comes out a little sharper than intended, but not really. No, fuck that – it comes out just as snarky and disbelieving as he means it to. He’s not Nathan. He can’t hide what he’s feeling worth a damn and he never could. “What do you not want me to do, Nate?”

“You were the one who said I should be on my own for a while.” He’s standing there with his arms crossed across his chest like he’s being put upon, as if there’s no way any reasonable person could be angry with him about this. Which means he knows exactly why Duke is practically radiating poorly contained anger.

“You’re the one who was going to stay four months ago.”

“You’re the one who didn’t want me to.”

Duke has something all ready to fire back, some accusation phrased perfectly to make Nathan feel like an idiot and an asshole all at the same time. It dies on his tongue as the truth deflates him a little. That was his fault, wasn’t it? “It wasn’t that. I didn’t want you to be stuck here.”

Nathan quirks an eyebrow at him. “We would have been together.”

“Until you decided to take off, apparently. Why did you even come back?” He doesn’t mean it and feels like a jerk saying it, but it’s either lash out at Nathan or let it be obvious that this is twisting him up inside and that’s a lousy alternative.

“You know why,” he says, not quite meeting Duke’s eyes.

“So you could let me know how pissed you are I blew it the first time?”

“It’s not that,” he sighs. He swallows hard, obviously struggling with whatever he’s going to say. “You were right, what you said before I left. I hate it, but you were. Not just about me.”

“Oh really?”

He chooses his words carefully. “You really want to follow me around while I finish school? What are you going to do for the next three and a half years, Duke? Have you even thought about that?”

“I’ll figure something out,” he mutters after a few long seconds of actually stopping to think about it. The truth is that he has no idea what he intends to do with himself. The plan has never been anything more complicated than _leave Haven_ , recently modified to _leave Haven with Nathan_. “I’m working on it.”

“No, you’re not.” Nathan pulls off one of his gloves as he’s winding their arms together, slides his hand into Duke’s pocket and around his hand. Duke never wears gloves, can’t remember them more than once before losing them, and the heat of Nathan’s fingers sends a shock through his own. “What did you do here while I was gone?”

Duke stops short, realizing that nothing is the closest answer he can give to the truth. What did he do while Nathan was gone? Waited for phone calls. Wrote letters he was too embarrassed to send and ripped them into tiny pieces. Got into fights with anybody who had the temerity to act cheerful around him. Listened to _Monster_ roughly four hundred times even though he doesn’t even like R.E.M. About a hundred of those times were while intoxicated and repeating “Strange Currencies” with an embarrassing frequency. Enjoyed two rides home in the back of the Chief’s patrol car and one very long and artfully cursed lecture on his life of delinquency, once after being ticketed for an open container and another time after not being ticketed for being a general pain in the ass. Got picked up another time by the Chief for drunk and disorderly, but that time he stopped the lecture a few lines in and gave him an odd look before telling him to go home. Talked about big adventures he was going to take as soon as he had more money, the time was better, whatever. Mostly he thought about Nathan, about what things would be like when they saw each other again.

“I kept busy,” he says, and it’s not entirely untrue.

Nathan looks distinctly unconvinced, but he presses on. “What are you going to do in Boston?”

“Boston? What the hell are you going to do in Boston?” The realization that there is a whole side of Nathan’s life he has no idea almost knocks the breath out of him. There’s been hardly anything distinct between them since they were kids and now it’s like all he can do is watch this unfold, like it or not.

“Finish school. I can start there next semester. One of my professors is from here and I kind of…I explained things to him and he’s an alumni there, so he helped me. Wrote me a recommendation too. It’s more money, but it’s worth it. I won’t know anyone.” Nathan’s still gripping his hand, his thumb rubbing slow circles over Duke’s cold fingers. He tries to focus on that, because everything else is just kind of confusing at the moment – that Nathan’s made these plans without ever mentioning them, that he didn’t bother to say anything until now. Duke’s been dumped before, more times than he would like to admit and in a variety of ways ranging from embarrassing to mildly amusing to downright bizarre. This doesn’t feel exactly like that, but being told what’s going to happen and that he doesn’t get any say in it does. “So, what are you going to do in Boston?”

“I don’t know,” he admits after a few seconds. “Be with you.”

“I’m really glad you didn’t come with me this fall,” he says carefully, holding Duke’s hand tighter when he flinches at that. “Because you were right. I didn’t really know if that’s what I wanted or not. I’ve never been away from you for more than a couple of days before.”

“But I’m smarter than you. Name one bad decision I’ve ever made.” It’s meant to be a joke, but Duke has to admit that it mostly sounds pathetic. “It’s not like I haven’t had the same amount of time to think about it you did.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you were really objective while you were sitting here pining.” The smile he gives Duke is a little tight, like he would really appreciate being convinced out of this but is going to stand his ground regardless. “Just give it another semester. Go do some of the crazy shit you’re always threatening to go do.”

“I know I said it would be ok with breaks and weekends, but I can’t do that Nathan. I don’t want to.”

“I don’t either,” he shrugs, like that much should be obvious. “But you always had all these big plans. You were going to see the world, right? Have all these adventures. That’s a big deal.”

“I don’t care about that shit, though. It’s not like I have to do it now or it’s gone, Nathan. I can wait for you. I want to.”

“Or you’re going to put it off forever and then how are you going to feel about this?” There’s an implicit _about me_ in there, but of course he doesn’t say that.

It’s not entirely surprising to Duke that the one time he shows good judgment and sound reasoning it comes back to bite him in the ass. It figures that after nineteen years of letting Nathan make all the plans that the one time he tries to be mature about something it haunts him for a year, an entire wasted year.

“Do you?” He could let it go, but if Nathan expects him to go along with this he’s going to have to give something back. “Really know, I mean.”

He nods, his lips curving into a small smile. “I told you I did. I’m way smarter than you. I figure things out sooner.”

“But you don’t think I do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you can’t be objective without something to compare it to, you know?”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I doubt that.”

“I’m not going to change my mind. But if you do, or you did, it’s ok. I mean, it’s not ok, but I understand. I don’t --” He literally bites his tongue because stupid stuff is going to keep pouring out if he doesn’t physically stop it. “You can jump in here any time and save what’s left of my dignity.”

He realizes that Nathan is trying not to laugh at him, his mouth twitching oddly as he stares straight ahead. It would be funny if it was happening to someone else. “Why?"

“You’re a dick.” He tries to look wounded and fails miserably.

Nathan pulls him close in a crinkle of jackets. It’s pretty damn hard to be close to anybody in Maine in the winter. “Four more months. And then if you still want it, you and me. No Haven, no Troubles. Nobody who would even believe they’re real.”

Duke lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, pressing a kiss to Nathan’s temple. “Yeah. Of course.” He could call his bluff, but it’s obviously become a thing for Nathan over the time they’ve been apart and if he needs some kind of waiting period or proof of seriousness then Duke will let him have it. He can’t think of anything he wouldn’t let him have when it comes right down to it, although he can think of about a million things he’d rather give. “I hate this.”

“I know. Me too.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Duke warns, shaking his head. “Don’t be surprised if I go off the grid and you never see me again.”

“It’s been a while since any of the weird things you do surprise me, freak,” Nathan laughs.

“Whatever. You love me.”

It’s just a stupid thing to say, something he’s said a million times to at least a dozen people, but it hangs between them, threatening and awkward. They don’t say things like that. They’re just friends. Duke might think those things all the time, but they don’t get said. He didn’t mean to, but it just came out.

The look on Nathan’s face suggests that he’s thinking about it, like there is a conclusion he’s been coming to but it takes a while because, well, it’s Nathan. And then finally, “Kind of, yeah.”

The drive back home is far less silent as the trip there, but this time Duke’s trying to wrap his mind around just one thought instead of a million racing ones.  


* * *

  
 _December 1997_

It’s late, but although the dark envelopes the streets to the best of its ability the glow of windows, bar lights and Christmas decorations take the edge off the bitter cold. Charlestown is packed despite the cold and the late hour as if the holidays and the beginning of the weekend have driven people out into the streets. Snow has been falling all day, just a dusting, but nobody cares much and it’s the kind of snow that makes you nostalgic and content rather than annoyed and looking for an ice scraper. It’s infectious and Duke is no exception, even as he pushes his hands deeper into his pockets and wishes for the thousandth time that he could keep a pair of gloves. He’s walking aimlessly, has been for hours since he met his contact a dozen or so blocks away to make a delivery, sometimes taking in everything around him and sometimes lost in his own thoughts to the point that the snow crunching under his feet is the only reminder he’s in this world at all. Over the last two years he’s grown used to keeping his own company and more and more he’s living a significant part of his life inside his head, unaffected by any attempt at outside entry. It’s simple that way, makes it easy to always be leaving somewhere.

“Duke? Duke Crocker?” He looks up to see Geoff McShaw inches from his face, breaking from a group in the crowd before throwing arms around Duke and hugging the life out of him. “Holy shit man, this is too weird. How long has it been?”

Duke might not have recognized him if Geoff hadn’t called out to him first as he’s cleverly disguised himself as a cross between Jesus Christ and Kurt Cobain, long hair and a straggling beard hiding his face. “Two, three years? What are you doing in Boston anyway?”

“You’d know if you ever came home. Or called.” He fumbles something out of his bag and unrolls a knife kit, getting some alarmed looks from people on the street. “Culinary school,” he laughs, clearly enjoying brandishing his weapons far too much. “So where the hell have you been?”

He shrugs, gesturing widely. “Everywhere?” It’s true; he’s only been back in the States for a week and only because the masochistic side of him couldn’t resist taking a job that would put him in this city at Christmastime. He could have been in Brazil. He should be in Brazil, where it wouldn’t be snowing, he wouldn’t need any fucking gloves, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be wandering random streets and chiding himself for thinking every once in a while _maybe_.

Geoff is about to ask what he’s been doing when it clicks, and he shakes his head laughing. “Like father like son, hm? You lucky bastard.”

“Your jealousy cuts me, seriously.” Geoff has always been the least sensitive person he knows, including himself amazingly enough, and he grits his teeth at the mention of his father. It’s not exactly an impressive legacy and most of what Duke remembers about him is made up of awkward and infrequent visits home, his parents screaming at each other, money sent in fits and starts. But the name got his foot in the door and given the choice between a minimum wage job and sitting in a cubical for eight hours a day he’s not too proud to carry on the family smuggling tradition. This isn’t exactly how he planned to get in all those adventures he swore he’d have back in high school, but it gets the job done in a roundabout way.

Geoff is grinning at him like a crazy man, and as much as he wants to be annoyed with him Duke can’t quite manage it. It’s been forever since they’ve seen each other, and Geoff has been his friend since elementary school, practically his best friend. Homesickness hits him like a fist to the gut and he realizes he desperately wants to find a pretext to keep Geoff here for a while. He can’t remember the last conversation he had with someone who wasn’t paying him or selling him something, or that lasted more than five minutes. “So where are you headed? You want to get a drink or something?”

“You sure you’re not too worldly to hang out with your old friends? Bill and Meg are here. She’s still as bitchy as ever.” He slings an arm around Duke’s shoulders and spins them in the opposite direction he’d been headed, not waiting for an answer. “Anyway, I got held up at work and so they went ahead to get a table. You’re never going to guess who they ran into. It’s like fate, man. Fate.”

Duke feels his smile stiffen into something else entirely. “No idea. Who?”

“Nathan! He’s still in school out here, but you probably knew that. Of course you knew that, you two are inseparable. It wouldn’t hurt for you to spread a little of that around and keep in touch with the rest of us though, just saying.” He affects what Duke can only assume is supposed to be a stern look. “He was leaving when they were coming in, but Bill got him to stay. Crazy, huh?”

He could be in Brazil. Right now.

It’s an annoyingly short walk to the bar, so short that Duke can’t think of a single realistic sounding excuse for getting the hell out of there. The last thing he wants to do is explain to everyone why they haven’t seen each other or spoken in the last two years. He doesn’t trust himself to act like everything is ok and he honestly doesn’t know what’s going to happen when he sees Nathan. Maybe nothing. After all, it’s been a long time. Maybe he will say _hi, how have you been, how’s school, it’s good to see you_ instead of _why did you leave that way, why would you say that and not mean it_ , or just _fuck you, fuck you, fuck you_. That won’t be awkward at all.

The bar is warm and busy, a dive with dim lights and the Rolling Stones playing tinny on cheap speakers. It smells like beer and grease and the press of drunk bodies, comfortable and a little unsanitary. He sees them right away, Bill’s head tilted back in the grip of laughter, Meg hiding her face with one hand and steadying a drink with another. They’re sitting close together, Bill’s hand on Meg’s knee and her own hand covering it, a glitter on her ring finger. Geoff may never have liked her, but he’s going to have to get used to it, Duke thinks absently before his eyes slip over the happy couple and move on to Nathan.

His posture is a little too upright for hanging out in a bar with old friends, like it always has been, like he’s just been startled or something. It’s adorable. Duke can tell he’s filled out a little since the last time he saw him and his hair is longer, just long enough to twist hands in, curling soft around the collar of the flannel shirt he’s wearing over a t-shirt and jeans. The look on his face suggests he’s as pleased with whatever joke he’s told as Bill and Meg are and he’s peeling the label from a bottle of beer, picking away the remaining shreds of paper there. And his hands are amazing, like they always have been, a little too big for the rest of him, long fingers that touch everything carefully and –

Duke knows this is going to go really poorly right away but it’s too late now. He feels like he’s not quite there, watching them on TV instead of standing next to Geoff, feeling the warmth of the room and nearly backing into a harried waitress. It’s like a chain reaction that he’s powerless to stop, all leading to the inevitable ending. Bill looks up to see Geoff waving and turns toward them, a smile breaking out on his face. Meg notices, looks up as well and gives a little wave, turning to Nathan and exclaiming something. He’s turning slowly toward them and it all feels like movement underwater to Duke, slow and silent. His eyes rest on Geoff first and his mouth starts to curve up. There’s no way Duke can hide behind Geoff – he’s a good six inches taller and a hell of a lot wider, but he tries his damndest to shrink in on himself.

It doesn’t do any good and he’s opening his mouth to make some kind of excuse for bolting, any kind really when blue eyes focus on him, go hard and cold and freeze him where he stands. Like an insect specimen on a pin, unable even to squirm. Somehow he’s following Geoff through the crowd like his mind is partitioned, half navigating drunks and oblivious bodies, the other half oddly blank. Not freaking out, not formulating an escape plan, just dull static like a dead radio. That gets him through putting an arm around Bill and Meg, kissing her on the cheek and congratulating them on the engagement while admiring the ring, a chip of a diamond he knows Bill can’t afford. Of course Geoff slides into the chair next to his brother to avoid proximity to Meg, leaving him the option of sitting next to Nathan. Wonderful.

He knows the smartest thing to do is stay for one drink, make a lot of noncommittal small talk and tell big stories about everywhere he’s been in the last couple of years before making a quick exit and putting as much distance between the two of them as he possibly can. Unfortunately Nathan was right – he really is the smart one and Duke is not exactly famous for his propensity for common sense.

“Nathan,” he says with a nod, as if it’s been a few days since they’ve spoken. Before he can think better of it Duke pulls him close like there’s no reason in the world not to, let’s his mouth brush Nathan’s ear as he murmurs “They don’t need to know, just be cool.” Nathan is rigid in his arms and Duke tells himself he holds on a second or too longer than necessary to annoy him, not because he’s using the excuse to breathe him in. When he pulls back Nathan is staring at him with god knows what written on his face and there’s a moment of awkward silence.

Clearly liquor is the only solution.  


* * *

By the time the second round of shots is on the way things are going much more smoothly, and two more in nobody remembers that there was even a moment of weirdness. Nathan avoids looking at him or saying more than two words in his general direction, but if anyone else is put off by that they keep it to themselves. Bill is more than happy to have a fresh audience for his proposal story and despite Geoff giving Duke the least subtle side eye in history the whole time, the tale is met with a round of applause as if eighty percent of the listeners hadn’t heard it before. Geoff has a million stories from school, knife accidents and a vegetarian who threw up all over the work table on the first day of meat fabrication and for a while he and Duke good naturedly try to one up each other.

“You really can’t go back to Jamaica? Ever?” Meg asks, raising an empty glass to drink from it before giving the rattling ice a crabby look.

“Well, I can,” Duke says, hands spread wide in a helpless gesture. “But I wouldn’t call first, is all.” He’s had enough to drink that he can’t really remember where that one started, but everybody is laughing into their glasses, even Nathan, so he assumes it all worked out in the end.

It’s good, being together again like this. It’s good to be touched out of affection and hear voices he’s known since grade school, to have inside jokes and shared history. It’s being home without actually having to go there. Duke hasn’t been back since he was supposed to meet Nathan there two years ago and as it stands he doubts he ever will. There’s nothing there for him now other than reminders of things he’s done his best to forget about and the more distance he puts between the town and himself the easier it gets. Never really easy, because it’s never really gone and he thinks about it at the oddest times. There’s always the thought that Nathan should have seen that, would have loved this, I have to tell him about whatever, and that never really stops. It’s like an imaginary friend following him around nagging him about an imaginary world that never got to exist. But like Nathan he’s learned to compartmentalize and section off that part of himself, leaving what’s functional, businesslike and unfeeling. It sucks, but it works.

It was still hard for him to believe, or maybe understand was the right word, that there had been nothing in the end. Not with a bang, but a whimper, he remembers from eleventh grade English class, the only line he really understood from the poem he just couldn’t parse. Although there wasn’t even a whimper, just an absence, a silence. Nothing.

For his part, Duke had mostly lived up to their agreement. He never really intended to take up the family business, not seriously. He didn’t have any ethical issue with smuggling because in all honesty it seemed stupid to him that invisible borderlines could dictate where you could buy and sell things. Talking his way onto his uncle’s boat wasn’t hard; Duke was willing to work for just about nothing and he wasn’t above capitalizing on his inability to learn from his own father. For once that absence worked in his favor.

He called Nathan when he could and actually sent the letters he wrote, covering them in odd looking stamps from odder looking places. It wasn’t exactly the sentence Duke imagined it would be, but that was because there was a definite end in sight. It was like being on vacation and knowing that eventually you had to go back to work, only he was counting down the days with anticipation instead of dread. Nathan’s semester ended on May seventeenth. They were going to meet back home and while it was supposed to be to figure out what happened next, Duke already knew. So in that way he knows he never really kept the promise. But it’s not like Nathan had any way of knowing that for sure, and it’s the only thing he keeps coming back to that would be even the slightest excuse.

He was two days late, but that shouldn’t have mattered. Given the arbitrary nature and enforcement of customs law, it wasn’t even really his fault. At least he likes to believe that. To this day he has no idea what was in the package and it’s more than mildly annoying to know that he was screwed over so epically by a box he never even got a good look inside of. Duke learned early on not to ask too many questions; more often than not he understands that he doesn’t want to know what’s inside. The whole thing should have been effortless, a delivery in Canada so easy that a ten year old could handle it. But something went wrong with the contact and a combination of overzealous local law enforcement and Duke’s overconfidence in his abilities landed him under arrest in a Canadian border shithole when he was supposed to be back home meeting Nathan.

In the end, it hadn’t been that big of a deal, a night in jail and a lecture about accepting packages from strangers, both of which Duke accepted with the good grace of someone who knows they ought to be in a hell of a lot more hot water than they are. He had no illusions that he was able to convince the local cops he was just an unfortunate idiot caught up in some kind of misunderstanding. As much as he would prefer to think he charmed and conned his way out of the situation, it was really the chief who saved his ass.

His first impulse was to use his single phone call on Nathan, but he would be somewhere between school and home and it was a gamble that Duke would even catch him. If he tried to get in contact with his uncle or any of his cousins he knew they would deny ever having met him and that he would have had to do the same if the situation was reversed. It was just how it was done. His mother would admit to knowing him, but since she couldn’t do anything for him besides give him hell for turning out just like his father he didn’t think the acknowledgement would do much good. Instead he swallowed his pride and steeled himself for the reaming of a lifetime before dialing the chief at home.

He hadn’t hoped for much more than getting him to tell Nathan he wouldn’t be there and to hang around for a couple of days. To be honest, when Duke got him on the phone he wasn’t even sure he could convince him to do that much. He thought about trying the same act on him as he’d used on the officer who arrested him, but Garland knew him far too well to buy the innocent kid in a bad situation routine. Instead Duke told him the truth, that he’d done something stupid (he had), that he was maybe in trouble but he didn’t know how much (both were true) and that a good word from a cop who knew him probably couldn’t hurt (it didn’t).

Garland laid into him, but that wasn’t unexpected. It was actually pretty mild, considering the circumstances. He could tell it was the kind of talking to that was going to end in his favor and that was enough of a relief that he didn’t question it too much. In fact, he only started to get a little suspicious when he offered to call back and tell the arresting officer that Duke was a good kid, too stupid for anything seriously illegal.

“You might want to check your plans, Duke,” he said, a caution in his voice. “Nathan’s not here. Called last week to say not to expect him for the summer. Would have thought you knew that.”

He came home and waited anyway. It had to be some kind of mistake, he told himself. Maybe Nathan just didn’t want to have to see his father again. But if there was some sort of error at work, it wasn’t one of miscommunication. The chief let him in when he knocked on the door, didn’t say a word when he stalked up to Nathan’s room like maybe it was an elaborate joke or a scavenger hunt. It was just as empty as it had been last August. The two of them stood there without a single word to say to each other, the only connection they shared gone without a tangible trace.

Duke had no idea why. It was like they hadn’t been in contact. It was Friday and when he talked to Nathan on Monday everything was ok. Sure he was a little quiet, a little frustrated sounding, but it was the end of the semester and he was half a grade away from failing Statistics II because the TA was mean and clueless. He was writing a paper on _Go Down, Moses_ and didn’t understand what the hell a bear had to do with any of it. He hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours a night in two weeks. But he was happy otherwise, relieved he’d found an apartment he could afford off campus and eager to see Duke again. He wouldn’t have a phone number yet, but it didn’t seem like a big deal since as far as Duke knew they were both assuming they’d go back to Boston together. There was no warning sign that he could find, no matter how many times he went back over that last conversation and ripped apart every word. There was no good reason, no indicator he knew he should have caught. Nathan was gone, and worse than that, it was obvious that he didn’t want to be found.

He stuck around for a few days trying to convince himself that it was just a misunderstanding, some stupid mistake on both their parts that they would laugh about later. But that was the end. It was totally out of his hands and Nathan hadn’t even bothered to tell him so. Maybe he didn’t want to face him, thought it would be harder that way. Or maybe he was indifferent enough not to bother. Whatever the reason, obscure as it was, it didn’t matter. It was done. Duke had only been kidding that Nathan might like being alone, but that seemed to have been a pretty sound prediction. He couldn’t blame him, not really. Nathan was free from Haven and there was nothing there to remind him anymore, nothing to bring back the nagging feeling that he was seconds from being outed as a freak. Eventually Duke had to admit there was nothing to do but go back to his life as it had been or wait in Haven forever. It wasn’t hard to choose the former.

It’s surreal, being here with all of them. They talk like they’ve never been apart, Geoff and Bill falling into petty arguments every twenty minutes or so before they come out of it like it never happened, Meg pretending to be offended by dirty jokes before breaking one out that blows theirs out of the water, Nathan sitting next to him like always, close enough that their knees bump every so often. The warmth of the bar and the alcohol in his stomach conspire against him together with the desire for the preceding years to have been some kind of bad dream he’s still confused about the reality of. Everything is soft and hazy, comfortable, and he’s stopped listening to anything being said a while ago in favor of watching Nathan. He doesn’t care if anyone notices, but considering that they’ve been matching him drink for drink it seems unlikely.

Nathan is arguing with Bill about something, the kind of good natured drunks’ argument that doesn’t have a real point and couldn’t be resolved with a legal team and input from King Solomon. His eyes go wide when he’s had a few drinks and they’re so blue, like water or sky or some other clichéd thing that idiots say about the people they’re in love with, only Duke would swear it’s the objective truth in this case. He’s gesticulating broadly, cracking himself up every few words and when Bill concedes to whatever point they’ve been debating he gives a little mock bow before clinking glasses with him. Geoff follows suit and then Nathan is turning toward Duke, glass extended expectantly, still wearing that smile.

When he realizes it begins to slip a little, but Duke doesn’t give him a chance to pull back and clinks their glasses together, one tap at the top and a second at bottom in a fluid motion that they’ve done without really thinking about for a long, long time. Much to his surprise Nathan doesn’t look away, holding his eyes as he drinks. Like he doesn’t have a god damned care in the world, like there’s no reason for him to feel even a little of the pitch and twist inside that surges up in Duke. Like Duke is the least important thing that ever happened to him and Nathan wants him to know it.

He should say something, excuse himself or at least acknowledge his leaving. Instead he shoves himself awkwardly away from the table and bolts through a dwindling crowd, ignoring Meg’s call of concern and Geoff’s encouragement to boot and rally. Duke pushes through the first door in his path, barely avoiding a tiny blonde waitress in his blind hurry.

Outside he sags against the cold brick wall, closing his eyes and trying not to think about anything but the rasp of his breathing. Duke tells himself that in a couple of seconds he’s going to get himself together, maybe a couple of minutes, but it doesn’t happen. His skin feels a hundred times too small, like everything inside it is bubbling and steaming, about to boil over and explode. It wasn’t this bad when it happened. In fact, it was the opposite. He didn’t feel much of anything then, almost as if the open wound was cauterized by the same blow that caused it, sealed over before it ever had a chance to sting. He knows he never should have let any of this happen tonight, no matter how tempting it was to pretend everything was right in the world for a few hours. Of course it ended this way – there was never any other way.

“So you’re just going to sneak out without saying anything? You’re getting predictable Duke.”

Duke opens his eyes to Nathan standing less than an arm’s length away, weaving a little either because he’s drunk or Duke is. His hands clench and unclench at his side and he’s got this look on his face that screams fight or flight clear as day. In all their arguments, petty and serious, Duke doesn’t remember Nathan being vindictive; quick to lay blame, sometimes distant, but never eager to rub his face in it like this. It makes him wonder what else he missed back then, what got overlooked and pushed aside because he only saw what he wanted to.

“I’m sorry,” he says before he realizes that’s what’s going to come out. He has no idea what he’s sorry for beyond having the audacity to show up on the same side of the country as Nathan, but Duke just wants him to go away after all this time just wanting to see him again.

“You’re sorry? You’re fucking sorry.” Nathan advances on unsteady legs and shoves him back against the side of the bar, his head connecting with brick hard enough to make everything go fuzzy and dark for a moment. “You can’t show up after two years and say you’re sorry like that means anything. You can’t say that if it doesn’t mean anything.”

Anger stings inside in throat, hot and acidic. “I was going to let it go, but if you want some special kind of contrition out of me you’re going to have to at least let me know what the hell I did to piss you off so bad. Or else you can take your little bitch down memory lane alone. That would probably suit you better anyway, wouldn’t it?”

“You couldn’t even be bothered to blow me off. Of course it doesn’t seem like a big deal to you. Nothing ever does.”

“I didn’t-- " he starts, trying to make sense out of anything that’s happened in the last few hours or even seconds with little success. Nathan’s not making it any easier, pressed tight against him, the only warm thing in the cold of the back alley. He can’t think about it anymore because there’s never been any point to it before and he still can’t see one now, can’t be bothered to jump through whatever hoops Nathan wants him to and pretend that it’s his fault so he doesn’t have to feel bad about it anymore. And there’s something wrong here, because there’s no gloating in Nathan’s face, no sense of triumph or satisfaction. He’s a mess, pale skin flushed angry red, eyes luminous and damp. It’s not the face of someone who’s annoyed an old mess came back to be cleaned up.

“Nate, I didn’t,” he says again, softer this time. “I promise I didn’t. I couldn’t have.”

It’s not a conscious movement when he reaches up to cup his face, run his thumb over the angle of his cheekbone and leans in just enough to brush his lips. Duke can’t help himself, and when Nathan doesn’t push him off he persists, tentative kisses until he responds, mouth open and hot. Nathan tastes like Jack Daniels and Coke, sweet and sticky on his tongue and he groans into it before he can check himself. It’s as easy as it always was and that should bother him a lot more than it does, but he can’t think about anything beyond fingers tightening sharp and painful in his hair and the sting of teeth sinking into his lip like a reproach. Nathan flinches at Duke’s cold hands under his shirt and again at nails sinking into soft skin, and his hips snap up against Duke’s like a reflex rusty from long disuse. Duke shifts against him, shoving his thigh between Nathan’s and pushes back, his eyes fluttering at the friction and the heat enveloping him. Nathan is latched on to his throat like he’s going to consume him, leaving a stinging trail of marks that burn against the cold air. He’s all teeth and sharp fingers and hard edges, none of the reserve left that Duke used to wish away from his touch. It’s angry, but there’s something else behind it, something starved and needy. It’s obvious how hard he is, rutting hard and uneven against Duke, and not just what happens when two bodies meet and respond accordingly. Nathan missed it. Missed them. That understanding shoots through him as hard as anything physical, tightening his grip and stealing his breath.

The proximity is too much, close to painful because it’s too hard, too insistent, but still so good that he can’t do anything more than grind back against the offering of contact. Somewhere in the back of his mind there’s a nagging to stop now, if only to keep from coming all over himself behind some bar and giving Nathan the satisfaction of his complete lack of dignity. Worse than that is that he knows he’s going to pay for this for a long, long time. He won’t be able to stop replaying it in his head and it will be worse now, the feel of Nathan under his hands and the taste of him fresh in Duke’s mind to make the torture just that much more vivid. It takes every ounce of restraint he’s ever had to disentangle himself and get a hand’s width of space between them, a sliver of cold air that leaves just enough distance to see the briefest glimpse of closed eyes and flushed skin, soft lips dark with cold and hard kisses. Then it’s gone, Nathan’s face hot against his neck like he’s hiding.

“Didn’t mean for that to happen,” he murmurs, his voice rough and dark. “Sorry, sorry…”

“It’s ok,” Duke says without meaning to say a damn thing to ever make him feel better, wrapping his arms around Nathan and holding him tight enough that it has to hurt. “Jesus Nathan, you’re a fucking idiot. It didn’t have to be like this.”

“Not like you gave me much of a choice,” he says, the anger he spat earlier drained away from his voice.

Duke has to shove him away before he can’t. It’s too easy to hold him like this because Nathan has always felt like he belongs in his arms, like he was made to be there. But he won’t let himself be backed into a corner and made out to be the bad guy for some crime he didn’t even know he was committing. He’s going to have to keep paying for it now no matter what he does, so if the only thing he can walk out of this with is his pride, he’ll take it. “Whatever it is I did or said or didn’t do, don’t you think two years is kind of a long time to hang on to that? I know you never forget a damn thing, Nathan, but to be honest I’m not going to be your scapegoat so you don’t have to feel bad about walking away from me without saying a word. Or even having the decency to give me a heads up during the months you said I had to wait for you, so you knew I knew what I was doing. I get it; I can’t do anything about it, but you’re not going to make me feel guilty about whatever screwed up justification you’ve got for what you did.” He can hear the brittle edge in his voice and he hates himself for being the one who still cares after all this time. “This time you can’t put it on me.”

Nathan’s been listening, but none of the anger or protest that Duke expects has surfaced. He stares back at him with those infuriating blue eyes wide like a scared kid’s and doesn’t say a word for a handful of seconds that stretches out torturously. Finally, after what feels like ages, he says quietly “you never came,” as if he didn’t understand a word Duke’s said.

It’s like Duke has absorbed all the rage that bled out of Nathan and it’s thrashing through his veins in a boil at the softness of his voice. “Is it because I was late? Seriously? Because it was two days and I wasn’t exactly off on vacation somewhere. I was sitting my ass in some backwoods Canadian jail begging the chief of all people to bail me out and let you know what was going on. Which was humiliating, in case you’re wondering, especially after it turned out that you already had other plans.” He knows he should stop trying to explain himself or anything else, but he never got the chance to do it before and it’s been so long being the only one who knew or cared. “Trust me, whatever it is you came up with for a reason to bail, it doesn’t even start to compare to standing in your room with your father, trying not to lose my shit.”

“You saw the chief?” he asks, looking like he’s having a completely different discussion somewhere Duke can’t follow him. “When did you see the chief?”

Duke takes a deep breath to keep from punching something. “August, two years ago. When I was supposed to see you. Not exactly the Wuornos I was hoping for.”

Nathan lets out a stream of curses that are impressive both for their duration and inventiveness. “What did he tell you?”

“Just that you weren’t coming back, that you called home and said you wouldn’t be home for the summer.”

Duke hasn’t let himself imagine what would happen if he saw Nathan again very often. When he does he imagines ripping his heart out with words sometimes, watching him break. But when his face falls it doesn’t feel like Duke thought it might.

* * *

  
Nathan’s apartment is in an old brick building that Duke would swear leans a little to the left and it’s all strange outcroppings and oddly sized windows. They walked there in silence, snow that was a holiday dusting hours ago falling in earnest now. It turns the night a grainy purple and muffles everything under a thick blanket that seems almost warm. Duke can’t think of anything to say, or rather can’t think of any one thing to say that he trusts himself to say and lets the near silence envelope them instead.

Inside it’s strange to think that Nathan lives here, sleeps here and brushes his teeth here. Brings people home here. It’s stranger still to think that this should have been theirs, that Duke should have been living here too all this time. The space is small, one decent sized room divided into kitchen and living room with a small table in the back corner, and what looks like a little bedroom in the back. One corner of the living room is filled with an overflowing desk stacked high with books and sheaves of paper, but everything else is orderly, ascetic. It’s impossible not to feel out of place, the only awkward unkempt thing in sight.

Nathan makes him go through the whole thing like a play by play without color commentary. He digs for ridiculous details that nobody could possibly care about – who was the arresting officer, what time was it when he talked to the chief, who he saw when he waited, minutiae that Duke is surprised he even remembers after all this time. He realizes it for what it is; after all, both of them had been on the receiving end of this kind of interrogation from Nathan’s father more than a few times when they were kids. It should offend him, he knows, the presumption that he’s guilty until a court of Nathan alone decides otherwise. Nathan watches him with no expression on his face, but the tightness in his jaw isn’t lost on Duke and if there has to be some kind of trial like this he’s ok with going through it. At the very least it’s nice to know that this is one of those rare occurrences where he can claim to be beyond reproach with a straight face.

“I just want to make sure I get your flawless reasoning,” Nathan says in a tone that would do a disappointed parent proud. “You thought it was a good time to smuggle something into the States because…?”

Maybe not completely beyond reproach. “Deliver. I don’t know what’s in the packages.”

Nathan rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand like it’s been a very long day. “You thought it was a good idea to deliver a package that you received in a foreign country –“

“Canada is hardly even a foreign country.”

“ – and you had no idea what was inside that package.”

“You think it’s a good idea to devote four years of your life to arbitrary deadlines and busywork in the pursuit of a piece of paper. I don’t judge your choices. Look, I don’t ask questions. That’s way above my pay grade and I don’t need that information. Don’t want it either.” He leans back, shrugging. “It’s not like you’ve never made any questionable trips across the border yourself.”

“Right, and whose idea were those again?” Nathan sounds like he half wants a fight about it, an edge of contempt creeping into his voice.  


“Because I corrupted you against your will and forced you into a life of crime?”

“That’s not the point.”

“But you still get to decide what’s right and wrong for everybody else. Jesus, you sound just like your father.” He doesn’t want to spend the rest of the night arguing about the moral ambiguity of the transportation of questionably legal goods and it seems like Nathan does, like he would rather stick with the places he knows he’s got Duke in the wrong than admit that there’s no blame to be laid where it matters. “It was stupid. I know that. But I tried to fix it. If you can tell me what I should have done, be my guest.”

He’s quiet for a minute, giving up scrutinizing Duke for staring down at a loose thread on his jeans that seems especially fascinating. “I know it’s not...I mean, it’s totally your fault. You’re an idiot. But you know what I mean.”

“Then what? You want me to be the asshole who bailed on you?”

“Maybe.” Nathan reaches for his hand, and shifting his scrutiny to Duke’s fingers and the way they fit together. “Maybe it’s better than me being the asshole who bailed on you.”

“He never told you.”

“Not a word. I just assumed you…it’s not crazy to think you changed your mind.” He gestures around the room helplessly. “Your life is different than mine. I figured that’s what you wanted, kind of always thought it would be like that. Not that big a leap.”

“It should have been.” Duke ignores his look of surprise. It’s insulting, the picture of him Nathan has obviously been building up to explain what happened. It has nothing in common with reality and while part of him understands and has done the same thing it still stings. “I never gave you a reason to think that.”

“No, you never made it sound like my plans were the worst thing that could ever happen to you, Duke. Not once,” he says, the sarcasm thick in his voice. “Besides, it’s not like I had a lot to go on. You weren’t there and you’re not exactly easy to get in touch with. So not intentionally, but yeah. It didn’t seem so unbelievable, compared to everything else.” Nathan is still holding Duke’s hand tight, like he’s worried he might pull it away, tracing along the veins in his wrist in paths that shoot tiny shivers through his skin.

“Like the chief?”

He nods, his fingers tightening unconsciously. “He lied right to my face. Like it was nothing.”

“I don’t get it. He helped me out, seriously. I mean yeah, I could have gotten out of it on my own. But he came through, got me out of there the next day. And when I was home, he seemed like he felt sorry for me. Like a normal human being.”

It’s obvious that nothing he can say is going to soften the anger that’s radiating off Nathan, obvious in the stiffness of his shoulders and the tension in his jaw. There’s never been anything close to what Duke would guess is a normal relationship between the chief and his son and he’s not entirely sure why. Nathan had never been the kind of kid that makes parents crazy, but his father was always on him about being smarter, working hard, growing up and getting his head out of his ass. There was a constant narrative that Nathan didn’t have a clue about the real world and he’d better get one before it was too late, but it never matched up with reality. Most of the trouble Nathan ever got into in high school was because of Duke; he wasn’t perfect, obviously, but the chief could have done a lot worse as kids went. But the rhetoric was always there and unsurprisingly Nathan didn’t take it all that well. Even when he was living at home they only spoke when they had to, like strangers sharing a house instead of a family. Still, it’s hard to imagine indifference turning vindictive that way, especially since the chief never did anything to keep them apart before and Nathan is more than old enough to choose his own friends.

He says as much, but Nathan laughs without any humor in it, his voice bitter. “You really think that’s what this is about? You and me being friends?” When Duke responds only with a blank look he shakes his head, still laughing. “He’s not stupid, Duke. He’s not stupid and we weren’t careful, not like we should have been.”

“He never said anything.”

“No, he wouldn’t. What do you think all that shit about growing up and being a man and making something of myself was about? Why do you think he kept on me about being a cop, staying in Haven?” He looks uncomfortable spelling it out, like he would rather just assume that they both know what they were and why the chief had a problem with it. “It’s not because you’re...you know.”

There are roughly a hundred ways Duke could take that, but he goes with the obvious. “A guy.”

“I don’t think, anyway. He’s never been like that. It’s so he can keep his thumb on me, get me to do what he wants. He’s always wanted somebody to turn Haven over to someday. He thinks he’s got some mission there, like he owes the place something and I owe it too because he’s stuck with me for a son. You aren’t ever going to be part of that.”

It makes a strange amount of sense as he traces that year backwards in his head, awkward conversations and that handful of oddly pitying looks. At the time Duke assumed it was some trace of sympathy, something long unused and dull with age but at least still present. He hadn’t thought much about it at the time because it didn’t seem that strange that someone who watched him grow up and had known how close he and Nathan were might feel for him then. Logically though that wasn’t Nathan’s father and never had been. As nice as it was to think he helped him out of the goodness of his heart, it was easy enough to figure out knowing what Duke did now.

There are half a dozen things Duke could say, maybe should say – after all, it turns out that it was his fault. All of it, really, because if he hadn’t presented such a golden opportunity then everything would be different. Finally he goes with “I wrote you, you know. Pretty much every day. I guess you didn’t get any of the letters. They didn’t forward them, or whatever.”

“I got them.” Nathan won’t look at him again, his voice gone odd and tight. “I threw them away.”

“You threw them away.”

“I was pissed. I’m sorry.”

Every one of those letters had been an apology for errors Duke had no idea he was making, probably twenty different perishable ways to contact him, things he never worked up the nerve to say to Nathan, conversations they never had a chance to have. If he had bothered to open one of them…

He slouches back on Nathan’s couch, lets his head fall back and closes his eyes against the orange glow that’s starting to fill up the windows. What was a pleasant drunken buzz hours ago is slowly shifting into a dull pounding in his head and the taste of stale alcohol on his tongue. He can’t imagine that the Nathan he knew would just throw out his words like that, so forcefully indifferent that he wouldn’t even hope Duke might have had something to say for himself. The truth is that he knows nothing about Nathan’s life now. Whatever he tells himself, it’s the idea of Nathan he’s in love with at this point, something he half remembered and half made up. He has no idea if this changes anything at all. It’s nice to think it does, that they can just pick up where they left off like nothing ever happened. It’s nice to think about a lot of things because he’s lonely and nostalgic, but most of those things have barely a fingertip in reality.

“You’re not real,” he murmurs without realizing it at first, lost in the ache in his head and exhaustion.

“Pretty sure I am.” When Duke opens his eyes Nathan is standing over him, reaching down to pull him up. “It’s officially tomorrow. You can crash here, if you want.”

Duke takes the extended hands and then they’re standing much too close to each other, Nathan looking up at him expectantly as if he wants Duke to decide where everything stands for both of them and make it easy and himself blameless. Duke wants to touch him again, see how much he’s allowed before Nathan cuts him off. He thinks maybe he wouldn’t and it maybe wouldn’t that bad to have this for just tonight, that it wouldn’t be that hard to leave in the morning. At least it wouldn’t have to be dealt with until then, and it would be a clean break this time.

Instead he pulls away and steps back, wondering why he’s always the one putting space between them when it’s the last thing he wants to do. If Nathan is disappointed he doesn’t show it, just shows him where he keeps clean towels and tosses him a pair of sweats with a college logo on the hip. Ten minutes of hot water and steam erases whatever remaining inclination he might have had toward self-reflection and by the time he’s stepping out of the shower he’s barely got the ambition to rub the water out of his hair and do the finger toothpaste routine because his mouth tastes god awful by this point. Nathan’s couch looks about six inches to short to be comfortable but Duke knows he would be entirely content with the floor right now.

Nathan stands awkward in the door to his bedroom like he’s trying to decide something. Finally he says, “My couch sucks.”

“It’s ok. I’ve slept on worse.” Which is entirely true, and none of those sleeping arrangements involved any kind of proximity to Nathan as a bonus, although Duke omits that thought.

“Yeah, but I don’t want to hear you bitch about it tomorrow. Come on.”

They’ve probably slept in the same bed a million times since they were kids and it was never a big deal, Duke tells himself. Nathan is trying to be considerate. That's all. He still hesitates in the same space Nathan occupied a few seconds ago, knowing he looks just as awkward. “You sure?”

He shrugs as if to suggest he doesn’t really care one way or another. “It’s fine. Unless you still kick in your sleep.”

“Probably,” Duke laughs, and he knows he’s too tired to do anything but give in. He’s about to make some crack about Nathan finally getting a grown up bed, but there’s hardly any space between his head meeting the pillow and unconsciousness.

* * *

Duke wakes up to the sun on his face and heat just this side of too much surrounding him. It takes him a minute to remember where he is, but when he does he keeps his eyes closed and lets it sink in slow. Everything smells like Nathan, cheap soap and sweat dampened hair and something warm he can’t ever place exactly, something that smells like home. That would be enough if it were just sheets and pillowcases, but Nathan is spooned close against him, one arm thrown around his waist and his palm flattened across his chest. Duke’s not sure if he still kicks in his sleep, but apparently Nathan still clings. He settles into the heat between them, drifting in and out of awareness as he concentrates on Nathan’s breath soft against the nape of his neck. There’s no telling what time it is and he’s glad there’s nowhere he’s supposed to be other than here, doing this. He comes to with a start once, the effects of too much sleep on top of not enough for days combined with strange surroundings, and Nathan’s arm tightens around him reflexively as he murmurs some soothing nonsense in his sleep and presses a kiss against Duke’s shoulder blade. Maybe that’s all there will ever be, but right now it seems like enough.

The next time he’s awake enough to form coherent thoughts he’s intolerably warm, suffocating in too many blankets and too much proximity. It’s not easy extracting himself from Nathan’s grip, but he manages it without waking him beyond a few muttered syllables. Duke’s stomach is empty enough to feel hollow; he can’t remember the last thing he ate yesterday and he finds himself digging through Nathan’s refrigerator with high hopes soon destroyed. It’s a graveyard of takeout cartons, pizza boxes and plastic containers of things that might have been edible at some point. There’s nothing in the apartment that could be called food in its natural state and it’s obvious that Nathan has been living on pre-packaged crap and cereal. Which is kind of endearing in a way, and kind of reassuring. If Nathan is seeing anyone she’s certainly not the domestic type and she doesn’t keep a toothbrush here. He never really considers the idea that there could be a guy; it seems oddly outside the realm of possibility. He has no good reason to assume that Nathan’s sex life has been a mirror of his own for the last two years, but any male body he’s tried to touch has only proved a frustrating disappointment and all he can do is compare everything to Nathan. Both times were hopeless exercises in substitution and he would rather believe it’s been that way for both of them. Either way, it seems like Nathan really is living here alone and that pleases him much more than he would like to admit.

Nathan’s keys are easy to find, thrown on the counter with a stack of mail that Duke may or may not check to see if anyone else pays bills here. It’s a quick trip to the little grocery store on the corner and he’s back in ten minutes with the makings of breakfast, frying bacon and hoping to god the smoke detector doesn’t go off in another five. Maybe it’s a cheap ploy, but he’s been making Nathan breakfast when he spends the night since they were in middle school and he doesn’t see any reason to stop now. Besides, everything else has the appearance of having fallen oddly into place and picked up where they left off. There’s something seductive about the normalcy of it, the feeling that things have come around to where they ought to be without either of them having to do much about it. He’s not deluded enough to think this is anything other than wishful thinking, but it’s also the happiest he’s been in a long time and he’s not going to ruin it with common sense. At least trying not to set the place on fire gives him something to do other than wait for Nathan to wake up and decide exactly how this is going to work out, because Duke has no illusions that he’s any more in control of what happens between them than he ever was.

Eventually the sounds of blankets stirring and creaking bed frame are audible from the other room, and Nathan stumbles out groggy and only partially awake. He grumbles something as he moves past Duke and hitches himself onto the last sliver of remaining counter space in the tiny kitchen, snagging a piece of bacon and gazing at the pan on the stove with interest. His hair is sticking up in crazy twists and spikes and Duke is infinitely glad he has something to do with his hands that requires most of his attention. “Bisquick?” he asks cautiously, as if hoping against hope.

“No, they’re real. I know you can tell the difference. But I don’t know where you keep anything, so unless you want to eat them out of the pan get some plates?”

“I’m really ok with eating out of the pan.” Nathan looks like he means it, but he pulls open the cabinet over the sink without relinquishing his perch. It really is a small kitchen, so much so that it’s impossible for Duke to move without bumping into Nathan’s knees or brushing his shoulder. He gives up on dislodging him from the counter; it’s obvious that the lure of breakfast that doesn’t come out of a cardboard box has him glued to the spot and a plate on his lap is as civilized as it’s going to get. The first bite has Nathan closing his eyes and letting out a little sigh of happiness, but after that he’s all business about bolting down as much as he can as fast as he can.

“You know they’re not hard to make,” Duke offers once the initial frenzy has died down. “No magic involved.”

“I know.” He runs one long finger through a puddle of syrup at the edge of his plate and brings it to his mouth, slowly sucking it clean. Anyone else and Duke would swear it had to be deliberate, but that’s Nathan all over. He has no idea what he looks like and no amount of telling him will change that, which makes it that much more infuriating. “I just like when you –” he breaks off, looking down at the plate on his lap with renewed interest. “It’s nice when someone else makes you breakfast, that’s all.”

“I bet,” Duke laughs, breaking the last strip of bacon in half and handing a piece to Nathan. “Sounds nice.”

Nathan pushes the plate aside and there’s a moment’s pause before his hands are at Duke’s waist, pulling him forward between his legs. He tilts his face up for a kiss it’s obvious he expects and Duke gives it with little more thought than he gives breathing or blinking. It’s always been that way, just made sense to give Nathan whatever he wants. It’s not like he doesn’t want it too and God knows he owes him, for when they were kids, for the last two years. There’s none of the urgency that was there the last time, just the warm connection of soft lips and the sweetness of Nathan’s mouth.

He pulls away slowly, still holding Duke in place. “It is.”

Nathan looks like he’s about to lean in again and Duke is all about letting him, only the nagging worry in the back of his head is ruining the feeling of hard thigh under his hand. “Are we going to talk about this?”

“What,” he asks distractedly, covering Duke’s mouth with his own again as he tries to articulate exactly what it is they should be talking about. He’s rapidly losing his ability to care about anything other than how good it feels or do anything other than pull Nathan tight against him. “Later.”

“No, Nate…Nathan. _Nathan_.” Duke finally breaks away, forcibly pushing Nathan back. “What are we doing?”

The look Nathan gives him is caustic enough to etch glass. “If I have to explain it to you maybe we should stop…”

“You know what I mean. I haven’t seen you in two years and last night was….weird. I don’t –” he breaks off to pull Nathan’s hand away from his face, wondering if he’s finally lost his mind. “Ok, this is what I’m talking about. What the hell are we doing?”

“Does it matter?” he asks, annoyance clear in his voice. “You’re here now, who knows for how long. Just let it be. Isn’t that your thing anyway?”

“Where do you think I’m going?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Nathan doing his best to get out of this conversation, squirming out of Duke’s grip and lacing his fingers together at the nape of his neck. “I just want you while you’re here.”

It doesn’t matter what he says or does, Duke realizes with a sinking feeling. Nathan isn’t going to let go of the anger he’s held on to all this time. He can be mad at his father all he wants and it won’t make any difference. He won’t be mad at himself for never bothering to do so little as open an envelope. So that leaves Duke to take all his mistrust and hurt, and most importantly all the blame he won’t put on himself. Nathan’s got to tell himself that Duke is only temporary and not to be trusted, because that way there’s no way to get hurt and no way to be at fault when it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I didn’t leave you, Nathan.” Duke steps away far enough that it’s not going to be easy for Nathan to wrap around him again, already cringing at the contrast between that movement and his words. He doesn’t know how to say the things he could in self-defense and feels like he shouldn’t have to. After all, Nathan hasn’t and isn’t going to. Still, it’s all on the tip of his tongue, filling up his throat to bursting – _I was in love with you then, maybe I could be little again, maybe I still am_. It’s the familiar feeling of being at Nathan’s mercy, unwilling to be the one who gives too much, unable to get what he needs without it. Only it doesn’t feel good anymore, not like the way it did when he was scared to be the one that wanted them more. Back then he wouldn’t have changed it if he could have, but now...

“I know it doesn’t mean anything, I just want…I don’t expect anything,” he blurts out, words pushed together in a single blur that manages to sound pathetic and indignant all at once. “I know you.”

“Obviously not.”

“So that’s what you want to talk about? About how you’re going to stick around and what, live my boring life? You’re going to go straight, get a job, just like everybody else?”

“I don’t know, maybe. Or you could come with me.” He honestly hadn’t thought it through before the offer was out of his mouth, but it is what he wants. He wants it more than just about anything, he realizes, and he has since the first time Nathan left for school. “It doesn’t have to be either/or. We could work it out somehow.”

“Right. Everything will be great, you the criminal mastermind who can’t get through Canadian customs and me with half of a useless degree and forty-thousand dollars in student loan debt. What are we going to do, smuggle small time shit and live on the road? Or maybe we get a place somewhere and you come home every couple of months to make me miserable and apologize for things you’re not sorry for and we live like your parents until we hate each other. That’s probably the second best great idea you’ve had, Duke. You’re a fucking genius.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” he says quietly, not quite looking at Nathan. Nathan who he knows he’s probably hurt this badly before, but has never done it to him until now. “It would be different.”

“This is why I’m the smart one.” It’s not funny this time, just bored statement of fact.

Disappointment wells up inside Duke like poison and floods him, making him question every stupid thing he’s done since last night. Something has happened to Nathan since the last time he saw him, twisted him up inside so that reality can’t interfere with the blockade he’s put up around himself, let alone compete with his protective fictions. It’s ugly and Duke hates it, and the part of him that is dumb and idealistic would like to stick around and chip away at it. Maybe excavate the part of Nathan that does know him better than anybody else does. But Nathan isn’t the only one who changed and Duke knows it, whether he likes it or not. It’s been a long time since he could afford to be that naïve about people. The truth is that he was right last night – they’re not the same people they were in high school. Like everyone else they’ve grown up, for better or for worse, and it’s just not possible to be so stupid and think that anything they had was permanent or unconditional.

“Ok,” he says, mostly because he has to say something or else the burning wetness that threatens to well up in his eyes is going to come out and he’s not letting Nathan see that, not now. All those times he told himself it was stupid to be the needy one and ignored it, assumed it made him a better person to be open and breakable that way, come back to him now like a slap in the face. Not for the first time he’s glad he travels light, dressed in his clothes from last night in a handful of minutes and not having to bother gathering anything beside his coat. He doesn’t say anything to Nathan as he leaves, even though he can feel the weight of his eyes at his back. Maybe he regrets something he’s said, maybe all of it, but Duke can’t let himself care. There’s nothing there worth looking back at and he already feels turned to salt inside.

* * *

  
Duke wanders. It strikes him as oddly appropriate, an epically blunt and heavy handed metaphor and that’s sort of what he’s in the mood for. He knows he should put as much distance between them as he can and never look back, which is exactly what he told himself all this time. Unfortunately Duke is very rarely capable of taking his own good advice on the infrequent occasions that he has any to offer. So he wanders and alternates between telling himself that Nathan is an asshole who deserves to be as alone as he wants to be and suspecting deserves that fate himself. Because maybe Nathan is right somehow. If anybody would know, Duke reasons, it would be Nathan. Or maybe he isn’t right but it doesn’t matter, because Duke also reasons that he’s had this coming for a while, payback for all the things Nathan’s forgiven from years ago. Maybe this is just what he deserves.

He’s been trying to tell himself that in the end this is for the best. Nathan is right; he has been the smart one. Sure it seems insane the way he’s built up this fantasy world that’s only ever going to make him unhappy, but it’s got to be better to know that it’s hurt as much as it’s ever going to. And it’s such a disgustingly Nathan thing to do that when he thinks about it, Duke has to admit that he shouldn’t even be surprised. The sensible thing to do is stop being a stupid kid who spends most of his time thinking any other person is worth this much of his time and energy. In the end maybe the chief did them both a favor, making them grow up out of each other, realize that you can’t make somebody your whole world no matter what you do because this shit between them is the inevitable result. It’s probably for the best that it happened now instead of another two years down the road broken into increments just like Nathan predicted, just waiting for one of them to check out and end it. People are fragile unpleasant things, sticky packages of neuroses and expectations that they don’t even understand themselves. Eventually, he tells himself, he’s going to look back on this and think this is the best thing Nathan ever could have done for him.

Today though, he’s not quite ready to be so pragmatic about things. He’s used to freezing northeastern winters, but it’s worse this year or at least it seems that way. Last night’s snow is at once hardened into ice and softened into gray slush, and no matter how deep Duke shoves his hands into his pockets it’s not far enough to get them even close to warm. One more pair of lost gloves can’t be the worst thing that happens to him today, he assumes, and he’s scanning the windows lining the streets for likely stores when he reaches into his inside coat pocket and his fingers connect with the scratch of wool.

The gloves are obviously old, soft and frayed a little at the wrist, faded from what was probably black into a dark gray. Duke has no idea when Nathan slipped them into his coat; it must have been last night when he was in the shower. It’s a small thing to remember, the kind of thing people do without really thinking about for the people they care about. The kind of thing you’d do for someone you know well enough to know they would need it. For someone you’ve loved for a long time, even if you thought they were leaving you in the morning. There isn’t anybody else he can think of other than Nathan who knows him that well or who would care if he was cold – no one back home, because it isn’t anymore. No one he’s met since. There’s never been anyone who worries about when he’s going to leave or hopes he’s coming back.

There’s just Nathan. Just like there always was.

It’s not hard to find his way back. Duke’s not sure how long ago he left, but without paying attention to where he was going he managed to retread the same ten or twelve blocks for most of that time. The building entrance door isn’t locked and he hopes on every step up four flights that Nathan hasn’t bothered to lock the door behind him. The knob turns easily in his hand and he has to wonder if maybe there is a benevolent universe watching over him, at least when it comes to things between him and Nathan.

He shrugs his coat onto the back of a chair and slips wet shoes and socks off at the door as he’s shutting it quietly behind him. The living room and kitchen are empty, the smell of bacon and syrup lingering from this morning without any other signs of life. For a minute he wonders if Nathan would go out and leave the door unlocked; it doesn’t seem like him, but it’s been kind of an unusual couple of days. Then he notices that the bedroom door is open, weak yellow light and indiscernibly quiet music creeping out in the dim of the darkening afternoon. Duke almost regrets being there, even thinks about leaving as silently as he came and letting it go rather than face the confrontation that’s making his stomach pitch and twist. But he makes himself go forward one step at a time until he’s pushing the door open without knocking.

Nathan is sitting cross legged on the bed, wearing jeans and a dark blue button down with the sleeves rolled up, his hair a little damp from the shower. He doesn’t look up immediately, finishing reading the piece of folded paper in his hands and putting it aside carelessly before acknowledging that Duke is standing there. He’s surrounded by similar pieces of paper and torn open envelops that are covered in odd looking stamps and yellow forwarding stickers. They all bear the same messy sloping handwriting, left handed a’s written from the wrong starting point like a child’s would be. It looks like it’s been snowing paper in his bedroom, a year’s worth of correspondence littering the bed and the floor and lying in his lap. When he finally turns his eyes up to Duke they’re glassy red and his mouth is thin and tight, like he’s holding something in that he can’t afford to let out.

“You said you threw them out.” It’s not what Duke means to say, not that he could explain what that would have been, and it comes from a little lower in his throat than he intends.

“I tried, but I couldn’t. So I just didn’t open them.”

“Why?”

Nathan straightens up in a way that Duke recognizes, like he’s steeling himself to say something he’d really rather not. “I knew you’d say what you thought I wanted to hear, exactly what I wanted to hear to convince me I couldn’t be mad at you. And I would have wanted to believe it. I would have let you talk me into forgiving you for it. I would have wanted to and I couldn’t do it again or I’d be doing it forever.”

So Nathan didn’t forget about before. The realization hits Duke like a fist and he knows exactly what Nathan sees every time he looks at him, what he’s already given up of himself to let him back as far as he did. There aren’t words to apologize or express gratitude for that and anything that could be said would be hopelessly inadequate. Instead, he just nods in understanding. “So now you read them.”

“Some of them, yeah. You’re wordy.” He picks up a handful of letters and lets them fall around him, as if suggesting the impossibility of even skimming them all in an afternoon. Most of them are long and Duke is more than a little embarrassed now that he knows Nathan has seen him splayed out across those pages, desperate and pleading in ink. “I didn’t want to open them, but I couldn’t throw them away either. So I just kept them until they stopped forwarding them. I thought maybe you stopped by then anyway.”

“I did, eventually.” Duke is still standing stupidly at a distance, not sure what he’s supposed to do or even if he’s really welcome here again. “I figured you weren’t getting them.”

“I’m sorry.” He takes a deep breath and it’s obvious that this is costing him something, breaking cracks in all the barriers he’s been maintaining so carefully. “For these, for before. I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok.”

“No. It isn’t. I didn’t mean it, I just…I guess it’s better to make you leave than have you go because you want to. It’s better knowing how it’s going to happen than wondering.” There’s something else on the tip of his tongue, Duke can practically see it, but he waits for Nathan to work up to it. “Yesterday I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Or that I wanted to. I thought that would be good enough and then this morning I hated that you would leave eventually. And I didn’t know how to get you to stay.”

“You could try just asking.”

Nathan nods like he’s considering that suggestion and finds it pretty sensible. “Stay? I don’t know what we’re going to do, but I want you to stay.”

“Nathan, I’m not going to leave unless you ask me to. Honestly I don’t know if I will then either. We’ll see.”

“Why did you come back?” Nathan laughs as soon as he’s said it. “I don’t mean it like it sounds. I’m glad you did.”

“Found your gloves.” Duke shrugs, suddenly too aware of the pale skin of Nathan’s forearms against the dark shirt, that he’s obviously been worrying his lip with his teeth, what seems to be the perpetual messiness of his hair. It’s not like he’s forgotten this morning and the softness of those lips on his, Nathan pressed against him hard and eager. “Thought you might want them back.”

“Thanks. I did.” Nathan is looking at him the same way overlaid with a caution that says he’s not willing to let it go that easily this time. He gestures for Duke to come closer, clearing away just enough letters to make a place for him. “Do you still want to talk?”

He does, frustrating as that is, but he doesn’t want to waste words right now that aren’t about what Nathan does to him. It’s not like Duke’s decided he was entirely wrong before; he’s got to be careful with Nathan because nobody else here is going to be careful at all. But this feels right, even more than it did last night or this morning. This feels like waking up together, the too warm closeness and that single press of lips he swore would be enough. But it’s not, Duke knows that now. That’s never going to be enough for him where Nathan is concerned because he wants everything, greedy for all of his time, all of his touch. “Not really, no.”

Nathan is moving over him before the words are out, straddling his hips and pushing his over-shirt off his shoulders. “For once,” he sighs in mock relief, although Duke thinks he might actually be just a little serious. Normally he would let that turn into an hour of trading insults, but instead he just raises his arms and let’s Nathan pull his t-shirt over his head.

His fingers trace the deep purple of the marks he left on Duke’s throat and the curve of his collar bones last night and he’s staring at them like he’s sort of horrified and a little awed. It’s not the first time one of them left a mark on the other but these are different, anger and need still evident in the blood colored bruises. “Shit. I’m sorry…” he trails off, the hushed depth of his voice suggesting he’s not at all.

“Don’t be.” Nathan’s fingertips are still playing over his skin, his thumb stroking the hollow of his throat just hard enough to be felt and Duke’s hands tighten on his hips in response, fingers sliding inside the waist of his jeans to press into warm skin. “When we used to…I always kind of wanted you to. Do that, I mean. Yesterday, when you – fuck, Nate,” he breathes more than says as Nathan skims over a bruise and presses down, testing, asking permission. Duke’s breath catches in his throat when the pressure deepens and the sharps scrape of nails follows and it’s got to be acquiescence enough because just this contact makes it hard to say anything coherent.

Nathan seems to get it anyway. He dips his head to press his mouth to yesterday’s damage and Duke can’t stop the whimper he lets out when Nathan’s teeth catch the thin skin before the warmth of his tongue soothes away the sting. “You never said anything.”

Duke grips his hips harder, pulling Nathan down tight against him as he pushes up against him, rewarded with both the friction of their cocks rubbing together through jeans and the sharp catch of Nathan’s breath. Duke lets him go just long enough to get rid of his shirt and deal with the button and zipper on his jeans. He strokes Nathan through a thin layer of fabric, watching in fascination as blue eyes go wide and flutter closed in pleasure. “Didn’t want to freak you out, I guess. I thought you’d think it was weird or something.”

Nathan leans down to kiss him soft and almost chaste, lips just parted and barely brushing Duke’s. There’s something obscene about the innocence of it, the sweetness of his mouth skimming the corner of Duke’s in contrast to Nathan’s fingers twisting sharp in his hair and tipping his head back. Duke is still working him slow and deliberate, and he knows Nathan wants the feeling of skin on skin, can feel it every time he arches up into his hand like a plea. The cotton under his fingers is damp with precome and Duke wants to touch him for real too, wants to see Nathan’s cock and feel the heavy heat in his hand. But part of him wants to torture him just a little, make him wait for it.

His grip tightens in Duke’s hair, just enough to hurt a little, and presses his mouth to the soft skin under his jaw, sucking hard. His voice is low and soft, words hitching as Duke strokes him. “Stop fucking around and touch me, and I’ll overlook what a freak you are. Promise.”

There’s a shade of darkness under his words that Duke hasn’t heard before, a suggestion that it’s more of a command than a request and it goes through him like live current. His fingers are wrapped around Nathan’s cock and pulling it free before he has time to think, smoothing slickness over the length slow and steady. Nathan thrusts up into his hand and groans at the touch, his head dropping to rest on Duke’s shoulder as he breathes harsh into the curve of his neck. He goes oddly still as Duke strokes him, curled against him quiet and clinging tight, and Duke realizes it’s because Nathan is watching his hand move on his cock in rapt attention. He’s taking in the slow motions, Duke’s thumb feathering over the head of his cock interrupting the fluid strokes, uninterested in anything outside those narrow confines. Nathan is so absorbed in his touch that Duke can watch him almost unobserved, see him come apart without reservation or self-consciousness in his hands. Every slow sweet drag and slide elicits a low vibrating sound of appreciation from Nathan, little unconscious sounds that send shivers coursing through Duke’s skin. He doesn’t know what he expected, that Nathan would have become self-possessed and reserved while they were apart, but he still melts into abandon with him, lets Duke see all the delicate things he keeps under cover the rest of the time.

Duke begins to move his hand a little faster as he skims his lips across Nathan’s jaw, pressing a kiss to the spot just below his ear. “Nate,” he whispers, his lips brushing his ear. “I really, really want to fuck you. Really want to. If you want me to,” he adds, tightening his fingers around Nathan’s cock just a little. He’s not totally surprised that that’s all it takes to push Nathan over the edge, wet warmth covering them both. Duke strokes him through it until the end, watching his face like Nathan had been watching his hand. There’s nothing about the way he looks when he comes that isn’t perfect from dark eyelashes fluttering on his cheek to fingers tightened to white knuckles on Duke’s arms, and Duke is greedy for it. He wants to see it again and again like there might be a shortage someday.

“Do you have anything?” he asks, not sure if he wants to answer to be yes or no. He wants to be the first one to do this with Nathan, like Nathan was for him, but he also just wants it to happen and if the price of that is not getting there first he can deal with it.

Nathan sheds his clothes like there’s a time limit and he’s racing it, but he nods toward the little bookshelf serving as a nightstand. All Duke sees at first is a neat row of paperbacks and a top shelf littered with empty water bottles, a handful of change and some random junk. Pushing aside the crap reveals a handful of condoms and a small bottle of lube that he’s pretty sure is the same one they used the first time.

“I had no idea you were so sentimental,” he laughs, getting rid of his remaining clothes and sweeping away the letters that still litter most of the bed. Duke doesn’t know if Nathan will want to keep them now, but he’d still rather not ruin them this way. He turns toward Nathan and pushes him back until he’s lying on his back, propped up on his elbows looking a little nervous.

“I’m not. It was kind of expensive. Besides,” he says, sounding more self assured than he looks, “maybe I’ve been using it.”

“No, you haven’t.” The curve of Nathan’s smile tells him he’s right and Duke is so satisfied with that that it’s ridiculous. “You sure you want to do this?”

“Yeah.” Nathan pulls him down close and gives him another one of those barely kisses that make him a little insane, holding him in place for a moment with a hand on the back of his neck. “I’m sure. Just…”

“I know. It’s good, I promise.” Something about the little nod Nathan gives him that settles into his throat warm and solid, and he recognizes it from before. It’s all the things he meant to say when he worked up the nerve or when the time was right. And it isn’t now, not yet, but he tells himself he’s going to get them out eventually. Instead he kisses him again, deeper than before, like he means it. “I’ll take care of you.”

Duke goes slower than he probably has to, but it’s not long before he’s got Nathan hard again and writhing on his fingers. It’s been slow torture and he’s almost convinced that he’s not going to last beyond the first feel of Nathan against his cock, but the choked sounds Nathan makes with every twist and push of his hand are worth it. When Duke pulls away he follows, pushing himself up to chase his mouth and wrap his legs around his waist, pulling him down again. He breathes “come on, come on” against Duke’s mouth like chanting, words losing their meaning in repetition. Nathan twists away just far enough to snag a condom from the bookshelf and tear it open, slipping a hand between them to roll it over Duke’s cock. “Think about church,” he says, smirking at Duke’s sharp intake of breath at his touch as he smoothes slick over him.

“You’re an ingrate, you know that?” He yanks Nathan up against him, pressing his back tight to his chest. He’s tense in Duke’s arms, strung so tight that it seems like his tendons are vibrating from the tension, eager and anxious and already worked up to and brought down from coming a couple of times. There’s a fine sheen of sweat on Nathan’s pale skin and Duke can’t stop himself from tracing the curve between his shoulder and neck with his tongue. Nathan relaxes at that, settling against him and twisting to seek out Duke’s mouth, his hands loosening just a little where they’ve been gripping Duke’s thighs. Duke shifts just enough to let Nathan’s mouth graze his jaw and he sighs in frustration, glaring back at him. “Seriously, you are. I should have just fucked you open and let you deal with it. Maybe next time,” he says, softer than before at the tremor that runs through Nathan at that. It seems like he wasn’t the only one who wanted more than careful touches back then.

As much as he would enjoy tormenting Nathan by prolonging his agony, there’s no way he can take the press of his ass against his cock much longer. As it is he’s just barely able to keep it together as he pushes inside slowly, tight heat enclosing him in a maddening grip like nothing he’s ever felt before. Nathan cries out as his cock slides home, settling deep inside him and hitting the right spot for the first time. For a moment Duke can’t move or even think about it, leaning to rest his forehead at the top of Nathan’s spine, just breathing ragged against him.

“You feel so good,” he breathes against damp skin, following the words with the briefest press of lips. Duke’s hands settle on Nathan’s hips, skimming over the hard curve of bone and holding tight. “Can I?”

“Yeah,” he sighs, rolling his hips back like he can take Duke deeper somehow. Nathan braces himself with one arm, long fingers splayed out twitchy against the wall and Duke covers them with his own. Duke finally lets himself move again, slow and deep, not hard yet but building there, like a warm up lap. Nathan lets out a sound Duke has never heard before, low and visceral like it’s being wrenched out of him. His head drops to rest on the crook of his arm, eyes closed and breath panting out over kiss worn lips.

Duke wants to keep going slow and sweet like this, make it as perfect as Nathan looks right now. But his good intentions are totally at odds with the reality that no matter what it looks like or what he wants, Nathan tightening around his cock like this is making it impossible. Duke can’t help but thrust into him harder and faster, gripping his hip with an intensity that he knows will leave bruises there tomorrow. Nathan’s cries and moans turn into stream of barely comprehensible words – he’s cursing, pleading, asking for more and for things that have nothing to do with sex at all. Duke has no idea if he can give any of it beyond this, but he wants to or at least wants to try.

His voice drops to a broken murmur as Duke reaches for his cock and works him hard, matching the pace of his hips driving into him. There’s something he wants to say, remarkable in its sincerity or at least it’s filthiness, but Nathan surges back against him and catches his mouth. It’s hardly a kiss, too urgent and lacking any kind of finesse. “Missed you,” he breathes into Duke between those messy kisses. “Missed this. Never stopped missing you.”  
Duke wraps his free arm around Nathan, crushes him close and tries to say everything with that desperate screwed up kiss that he can’t quite articulate yet. Nathan tenses against him, whimpers against his mouth and then he’s coming hot over Duke’s hand and his own stomach. The sudden tightening around his cock is enough to push Duke over too and then everything is blank and empty, nothing existing outside of heat and pressure and mindless pleasure.

Nathan makes a small sound of regret as Duke pulls out and another of annoyance when he tosses the tied off condom in the general vicinity of the trash can, but he sinks down onto the bed dragging Duke with him in a tangle of limbs. “Lazy bastard.”

“You want me to move?” he asks, winding his arms around Nathan and kissing him lazy and slow.

“Not really.” He’s studying Duke’s face for something, pushing sweat damp hair out of his eyes. He’s pretty sure anyone other than Nathan submitting him to that kind of scrutiny would be uncomfortable at best, but this doesn’t bother him. When Nathan speaks again he sounds like he’s been considering it for a while, a long sought conclusion. “You’re kind of pretty, you know that?”

“Like a girl?” Duke laughs at that, shoving his shoulder. “Thanks.”

Nathan shakes his head, still giving him a half lidded look of inquiry. “No. Just like you, I guess. I’m glad you came back,” he adds, settling against Duke with a finality that suggests he doesn’t intend to move again for the foreseeable future. “And that you’re staying.”

“Me too.” There’s something stabbing at his shoulder, and Duke realizes it’s one of the letters. He skims over it, groaning in embarrassment at a particularly vivid description of the disappointments of life without Nathan. “Please tell me you didn’t read this one.”

“I read all of the opened ones,” he says, propping himself up on one elbow to look down at Duke. “Why?”

“Because it’s embarrassing, that’s why. I sound like a heartbroken teenage girl in some of these.”

“Some of them?” Nathan is quirking an eyebrow at him, grinning and not bothering to hide his amusement.

“They’re going in the trash as soon as I feel like I have bones again.”

“No, I want them.” He pulls the paper out of Duke’s hands, smoothing it out before letting it drift to the floor. “The things you wrote…I like hearing those things.”

There’s a look on his face that’s both expectant and hopeful, and Duke wants to tell him it’s all still the same and that none of it has changed or will change. But he catches himself just as it’s on the edge of his tongue. He thinks it’s all still true, but there’s no advantage in spilling it all out now. Instead he pulls Nathan down until their mouths meet, kissing him until neither of them are worrying about anything the other might say at all.

* * *

  
 _May 1999_

“I thought this was your night off?” Geoff hangs over the refrigerator while Duke fishes out beer for an impatient dark haired girl he’s not sure he knows. The kitchen is uncomfortably full with the three of them and not for the first time Duke thinks they really need a bigger place.

“Apparently not.” He finally emerges with three bottles, handing one off into the girl’s outstretched hand before opening the others. “No rest for the wicked, right?”

“You haven’t been wicked in ages.” Geoff drinks down half the bottle in one awkward swallow, always showing off even if no one is looking. It’s endearing, at least Duke’s always thought it was. Geoff needs a lot of attention and he’s never gotten out of that teenage phase of not caring whether it’s good or bad.

“Shut up.” Geoff ignores the directive, running a steady stream of commentary about some girl he’s been trying to pick up all night with dismal results. He’s right, Duke knows, but it still chafes a little. Bartending is not exactly living the outlaw life but it pays the bills with money left over to stash for the life he’s envisioning once they’re out of here. Which is kind of a trip in and of itself – either Nathan is a very good influence or he’s just kind of lost it. Both seem infinitely possible.

The latter seems much more likely though as Nathan is currently sitting on the floor of the living room with a bottle of Jack in one hand, still wearing his graduation cap from this afternoon poised at an impossible angle. He’s gesturing widely with the bottle and Duke is a little worried for the other recent graduates within swinging range, but honestly they’re probably not going to notice if they get hit or not. He doesn’t blame them – this is the last time most of them are going to see each other for who knows how long and if he didn’t spend Tuesday through Saturday with drunks he’d probably be waving his own bottle around. Nathan’s last semester was a miserable sixteen weeks for both of them, endless hours of group projects and long nights working on an honors thesis making it infinitely more so for Nathan. Half the time Duke would come home at three in the morning and find him still cursing at the paper, pull him away from it and push him into bed only to wake up a few hours later to loud typing pouring from the living room. Duke has no idea how Nathan is making words considering how tired and drunk he is, but he’s happier than he’s seemed since the beginning of the term and that’s good enough as far as Duke is concerned.

The truth is that he might be even gladder than Nathan is that the semester is over and it’s not going to pick up again. They’ve got a couple of months on the lease here and Duke is ready to leave Boston behind like a bad habit so he can get back to all the actual ones he’s been without. Mostly without. There have been a few odd jobs here and there, long weekends Nathan didn’t ask too many questions about, and when Duke is honest with himself those days have been a huge relief from the tedium of holding down a job and living like everyone else. In the beginning smuggling was never supposed to be permanent, but now that he’s got a taste for it, the planning and the execution, the risk, he can’t get enough. For the most part they have an unspoken agreement that Duke won’t do anything, or at least get caught doing anything, that can result in jail time and he’s almost kept up his part of that deal. He assumes that if they didn’t talk about it explicitly then he doesn’t have to follow it all that faithfully.

The reason it’s an unspoken agreement is because they never did get around to talking about it, any of it really. It was easy to fall into a routine of being together and harder to acknowledge that things must have changed a little while they were apart. It didn’t feel like it and still doesn’t most of the time, so they didn’t worry too much about what would happen after this. It’s been ok here – better than ok, he reminds himself. Nothing has changed about the way they feel about each other. They have friends, people Nathan goes to school with, people he works with, Geoff when he’s not busy with work and school, and Bill and Meg when they come out to see Geoff. Duke makes decent money and things aren’t as tight as they could be. They have a good routine.

Which is the problem. Duke is bored out of his mind and has been for weeks. Months, if he’s being honest. It’s not Nathan, or at least he’s about ninety-nine percent sure it’s not Nathan. In the beginning just having Nathan was enough, but he’s old enough to know that any other is never going to be enough for him, or for anybody. That’s not only stupid, it’s unfair to everybody involved and he won’t feel guilty about it. That understanding doesn’t take away the fact that he had a taste of freedom, two years of doing what he pleased and not being accountable to anyone and he knows there’s more out there than bartending and ticking the days off a calendar. He has no illusion about not being very happy during that time, but he’s not exactly happy with this either. Happy to be with Nathan, more content than he thinks he’s ever been since he was a kid, yes. It’s hard not to be when he’s getting as much sex as he wants whenever he wants from the person he wants it from for the first time in his life. But that contentment scares him, like it’s weighing him down into a rut he’s not going to get out of. He doesn’t want to leave Nathan and wouldn’t. Probably couldn’t, if it came down to it. Still, he imagines himself anywhere else all the time and it freaks him out, makes him worry that maybe Nathan was right about him. There’s something in him that can’t settle and it pulls at him, keeps him up at night and whispers in his ear that it’s not so bad being on his own, that he’s not cut out for this anyway and everyone knows it except him. If Nathan’s noticed anything he’s not letting on, but then he wouldn’t anyway. Still, if he’s not convinced that everything is right in the world he’s doing an awfully good job pretending otherwise.

Geoff is still going about Kate’s audacity in refusing his advances when Duke starts paying attention again. “So she says ‘Isn’t that like vocational school?”

There’s obviously a punch line of some kind there, but Duke’s missed it completely. “Her loss,” he offers, hoping that’s an appropriate contribution. He knows Geoff well enough to know that he doesn’t really care if he’s listening; he just wants someone to monologue at.  
Instead Duke watches Nathan, can’t help the smile that pulls at his mouth while he does. He may be less than thrilled about the ordered life they’re living, but he’s not indifferent to what this has meant for Nathan. He’s put himself through school, graduated with honors and he’s done it on his own. It’s a hell of a lot more impressive than anything Duke has ever done and it’s the only reason he hasn’t tried to get them out of here sooner.

Nathan glances back at Duke, as if he can feel the weight of his thoughts. His face breaks into a wide grin, eyes tired from too much alcohol and too little food and sleep, but he brightens when their eyes meet anyway. He looks away a moment later, but Duke keeps watching him anyway with a stupid fond smile on his face. He knows he’s never really gotten over the feeling that Nathan’s going to be taken away again without warning and it’s like he’s trying to get his fill while he can.

“What’s going on with the two of you?” Geoff asks carefully, looking down into his bottle like he’s never seen anything more fascinating.

“What do you mean?” Duke is just as careful in his response, his voice even and detached. He loves Geoff, the stupid blunt jerk, but they’ve never talked about him and Nathan and he’s happy to keep it that way. Most things are not improved with the addition of his insight. Geoff has about as much to offer the world in terms of relationships as Duke has to offer on ethics.  
His first instinct is to say that it’s complicated, but it isn’t, not really. They don’t try to hide it from anyone; everyone here knows they live together and it’s been a long time since he thought anything of someone calling Nathan his boyfriend. Duke doesn’t ever really think of him that way, doesn’t think of him any way other than just Nathan, his best friend. Calling it anything has never been a big deal to either of them. Neither of them is big on public displays of affection, probably a product of where they were raised as much as any personal preference. But Duke knows it has to be obvious, even to somebody as oblivious as Geoff. It shouldn’t be a surprise to him, but he’s trying to make it seem that way.

“Come on, man, I remember high school. You didn’t exactly play for the home team back then.”

“Yeah, I did.” He ignores Geoff choking on his beer. “You were just so busy getting turned down by every girl we knew that you didn’t have time to notice.”

“Since when?”

“Junior year? Maybe before, I don’t know. A while.” He lets Geoff regain his composure because he’s working on his own. He would like to say it doesn’t matter, but he’s not surprised that it does. They don’t exactly come from the most liberal place on earth and he remembers high school. He knows Geoff won’t hate him over it, but he’s been avoiding it for a reason. Duke just wishes he hadn’t picked tonight to get interested in his sex life. “What difference does it make?”

“None, I guess.” He runs a hand through his hair, looking anywhere but at Duke. “Not going to lie, I don’t get you and Nathan. Never did even before this. This settle down and nest shit is really your thing?”

“You know it’s not,” Duke admits, draining the rest of his bottle to avoid the raised eyebrow Geoff is aiming at him. “Look, it’s not like that. We’re not exactly picking out a china pattern. Things are going to change now that he’s done with school.”

“And he’s ok with playing Bonnie to your Clyde?”

“Sure. Why not?” Duke has no idea if that’s the truth or not. It’s not that Nathan is inflexible or doesn’t understand the wiggle room between legal and illegal and right and wrong. He’s said things that make Duke think he would at least consider the possibility, but he hasn’t worked up the nerve to out and out ask. He’s just been making idle plans and hoping for the best. The same way he deals with everything between them.

Geoff looks like he’s debating pushing ahead and leaving it alone. “I’m just looking out for you.”

The last thing he wants is the annoyance surging inside him, but it’s there anyway before he can stop it. It’s classic Geoff, afraid everyone else will pair off and leave him alone. Duke has been as close to them as they are to each other since they were kids. Of course it’s no different. In some ways it’s probably a little worse. Bill is stuck with him no matter how obnoxious he is and Geoff has always been a little weird about Nathan.

“I’m touched, but you don’t have to worry about me. We’re fine.” He tries to laugh it off but the sound comes out tinny and unconvincing. “You didn’t worry about it the last two years.”  


“So it’s pretty serious?”  


“Yeah. Of course it is,” he says, hoping the look he’s giving Geoff is going to be enough to end the conversation before one of them loses their patience.

“What about when it comes back?”

 _Fuck_. Duke’s heart is in his throat, threatening to choke him. It’s been almost four years since he’s thought about them, longer than that since anyone’s mentioned them to him. It’s not like he’s forgotten, but he’s made a good attempt at it. “When what comes back?”

Geoff snorts, shaking his head. “You know. You know, I know, and you can bet your ass Nathan knows. What the hell are you going to do when it comes back?”

“Don’t.”

“I’m saying it for your own good. Jesus Duke, you remember when we were kids. There’s something wrong with him. Always will be. What happens when it comes out again and –“

He doesn’t get a chance to finish before Duke is dragging him out of the kitchen and through the living room toward the door. He’s sure he steps on at least one drunk, but if there are any sounds of complaint they’re lost on him. For the first time he doesn’t really notice the four flights of narrow stairs even though he’s half pushing, half pulling Geoff down them until they’re outside on the sidewalk. Duke doesn’t trust himself to say anything because he knows whatever comes out of his mouth is going to be embarrassing and too much, incoherently angry. He can’t talk to Nathan about Nathan, so he has no idea how to do it with Geoff.

For his part Geoff looks like he can’t quite wrap his head around the sudden change of location. Any other time the look on his face, as if he’s two steps behind the world around him and is only just realizing it, would be hilarious. “You know I’m right,” he finally says.

“He’s fine. Whatever it was went away and he’s fine. I don’t know if it even can come back if he’s not there. Or if any of that shit is even real. And it’s none of your god damn business,” he finishes lamely. Duke isn’t sure if he’s trying to convince Geoff or himself, a hollow undercurrent of doubt in his voice that makes him hate himself.

“Right. I get that you feel sorry for him or whatever – I do too. But you can’t tie yourself to that. Not when you know how it’s going to turn out.”

“You don’t know that.”

“What if I’m right?”

“I don’t fucking care!” He knows it shouldn’t bother him; half of what Geoff says is good intentioned bullshit and the rest is hot air. They argue all the time because Geoff seemingly can’t speak without starting an argument and Duke has always found it amusing to indulge him in it. But he should be able to see how this is different than some stupid disagreement about The Clash or green olives or which one of the identical Kelly twins is hotter, shit no one could care about if they tried. It’s Nathan and Nathan is off limits. Nathan has always been off limits between them and even Geoff, dense as he is, should be able to understand that.

“Maybe you should. He’s always been a freak– “

Whatever qualification Geoff was going to offer never comes out because he’s not expecting Duke to take a swing at him, let alone connect. Neither is Duke, not really. They fought like any other kids growing up, but never for real. This is pretty damn real though, Duke realizes, because blood is pouring out of Geoff’s nose in a steady stream and soaking the front of his shirt. He doesn’t know what to say – there’s no room for the part of himself that cares because he’s still so fucking mad at Geoff, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides because the only thought hammering in his brain is _again, again, again._

“Seriously?” At least that’s what it sounds like Geoff’s saying while he clutches his face, anger and surprise mingled in the glare he’s giving Duke. “You know I’m right. You know I am.”

“You should go.”

“Duke, come on.”

“You should go before I finish beating the shit out of you.” Duke turns away before Geoff can say anything else, holding up a hand in warning like they’ve just been talking. For a minute he can see Geoff stepping toward him out of the corner of his eye and he knows if he comes any closer that he’s going to hit him again and not stop this time. Not be able to stop and not want to. Finally Geoff seems to think better of it and the sound of muffled cursing fades down the street and then he’s gone like he was never there.

They’re hundreds of miles from home and Nathan is still right – as long as there’s someone from Haven around they’re never going to really be away from it. Duke has never understood that before, but now he thinks he can feel a little of the stranglehold it has on Nathan. Maybe he can understand just a little of the misery that place makes for him and why he used to go quiet if Duke brought up going home, before he just stopped ever mentioning it. It was stupid thinking they could keep any connection to home without having home breathing down their necks. Geoff won’t be back soon, but he won’t stay angry forever and when he comes around looking for one of the second chances they’re always giving each other Duke knows he’s going to have to refuse it. He can’t even think about him without getting pissed and nervous, like he can invoke the Troubles just by having been around them and having the audacity to talk about them. There’s no way he can look him in the eye and not see it.

A tiny nagging voice buzzes in his ear and suggests part of him must know that Geoff had a point. Duke holds on to the idea that as long as they stay out of Haven Nathan can’t be Troubled anymore, but he has no proof of that, not even any supporting evidence. It’s the same logic that makes children hide under their blankets when they’re scared at night. If you can’t see it, it can’t hurt you. He wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t care; this thing with Nathan isn’t dependent on him being able to feel anything, isn’t dependent on anything other than Nathan being there. But it’s not himself that he’s worried about. Nathan doesn’t acknowledge those years and acts like his life stopped for and picked up again without warning like the intervening time wasn’t even a mystery, just a few blank pages in an otherwise average book. Obviously those missing days are the source of his reserve, his reluctance to get close to people until they’ve almost given up trying, the way he’s still uncomfortable being touched by just about anyone other than Duke. Ignore it or not, Nathan is still feeling the absence of that time. What’s less obvious is what it would do to him if it came back. It’s not beyond the scope of reason that Nathan might bolt without warning, because Duke knows all those things Geoff said are nothing compared to what Nathan has running around in his head. If the Troubles can come back it will be him losing Nathan, not the other way around.

The door creaks open behind him and Duke wheels around to lay into whoever had the misfortune to interrupt his thoughts. The curses die in his throat when he realizes it’s Nathan ambling toward him on unsteady legs.

“What’re you doing down here?”

“Geoff left,” he says without missing a beat. “I walked out with him. “

“He left?” Obviously Nathan is having a little bit of trouble processing information. He catches Duke’s hands and pulls him toward himself, laughing as he stumbles a little. “Why?”

“Because it’s three in the morning.” Duke tries not to wince at the pressure across his knuckles, hoping Nathan isn’t going to notice.

But of course he does, frowning as he raises Duke’s hand comically close to his face for inspection. “What did you do?” It’s not quite accusatory, but there’s an underlying suspicion there already.

“Nothing. Shut it in a drawer at work.”

“No you didn’t. You’d already have a bruise.” Nathan hangs on, running his thumb over the redness, calculating. Of course he would know – it might have been a long time ago, but he’s used to knowing what injuries look like instead of how they feel. “Tell me.”

“Nate, come on. Let it go.” Duke pulls him in close, drawing Nathan’s arms around his neck. He tells himself it’s not exactly lying, but it feels a lot like it. Usually he likes being just enough taller to look down into Nathan’s eyes, but the lingering doubt there ruins it this time. “What do you say we get rid of everybody and I make you forget about it?”

“Did Geoff say something to you?” His voice goes quiet and uncertain, and it’s obvious, at least to Duke, exactly what he’s asking. It’s always there, right under the surface waiting to break free. He might not think about it like he used to, because it felt safe here where almost no one knew. In the end though, there’s never any getting away from it and Duke feels like it hits them at the same time, Nathan looking up at him full of disappointment like he wants him to fix it somehow. He would give anything to, do anything to make it better but it’s completely out of his control. He’s not Troubled. He can’t even understand, not really. Even if he knows this is just another ruined place, one more place Nathan thought he was away from it only to have it sneak back up at exactly the wrong time. Maybe they aren’t ever going to get away from it. Maybe it’s as impossible as Geoff thought it was. It turns his stomach, the anger pulsing through him with his blood again, and he realizes it’s helplessness. Pure, unalterable helplessness. All the things he’s been telling himself they have to look forward to, all the sacrifices to his selfishness he’s made so they can have a life here don’t matter. The one thing that Nathan really wants or that could mean anything to him is something Duke can’t ever get for him. He can never really take him away from Haven. It’s always lying in wait, threatening dim and shapeless like something you swear you catch out of the corner of your eye but can never really pin down.

“He didn’t say anything,” he says, but it lacks any conviction, the edge of anger too sharp. He’s hardly thinking when he fists his hands in Nathan’s shirt and pulls him in, bringing their mouths together hard enough for teeth to clash. Nathan melts against him open mouthed and eager, letting Duke envelope him like he knows they both need it; Nathan needs the reassurance that nothing changes and Duke needs to give it.  
There isn’t anything else he can do, nothing he can give Nathan other than this. He can’t make himself content, can’t be honest about it, and he certainly can’t do anything to take away what happened before. This is just a reminder that it isn’t as bad as it could be, yet. It doesn’t change anything or even make it better, probably doesn’t even distract him from it. Someday there might not even be this.  


* * *

They don’t talk about it afterward. Duke makes good on his offer to make Nathan forget about the whole thing and for the most part it works. He doesn’t bring up Geoff or what might have been said and Duke lets it go, grateful. Instead they talk about everything else, the awful speaker at graduation and the mystery of who threw up in the stairwell, whose job it is to clean up tomorrow morning and other times they went to bed when the sun was coming up. When they run out of today Nathan lets Duke distract him with old stories, things that happened while they were apart and things that happened when they were in high school. He feels like he’s talked forever, like his voice is going to run dry. He doesn’t care if it does; Nathan laughing with his face buried in his shoulder well worth it.

“Wasn’t that the night I fell out your window?”

“Yeah, I think so. Half way through junior year, right?” Duke remembers like it was yesterday, but he’s not sure Nathan does as clearly. He couldn’t have forgotten completely though, not with the faint ridge of scar raised on the smooth plane of his left hip. Duke traces it absently with his thumb, almost oblivious to the little shiver that runs through Nathan as he does.

Nathan squints like he he’s actually looking through his memory, something he’s always done that never fails to get to Duke a little. “Just about. I’m lucky I didn’t have to spend the rest of it on crutches.” He sorts out the details more or less; Duke’s house was always a better bet for stowing away anything they didn’t want their parents stumbling over and the tiny crawlspace attic was an opportunity too secure to pass up – you couldn’t even get into it without standing on your toes on a chair. Nathan was narrower and the logical choice for getting into tight places, but he was also coming off an epic growth spurt and a hopelessly clumsy mess of limbs he didn’t know what to do with yet. “Screwed once again by one of your brilliant plans.”

“Screwed because you couldn’t walk without tripping over yourself,” Duke laughs.

“I tripped because I was standing on a wobbly chair in front of your stupid window,” Nathan protests, smacking him lightly. “You could at least pretend to be a little sorry.”

Duke kisses him softly, trying to look contrite. “I’m sorry you were such a clumsy dork. At least I drove you to the hospital, right?”

“Because you thought your mom would kill you.”

“She practically did anyway.”

“You deserved it. I could have died.”

“You could have broken your ass at worst.” He ignores Nathan’s pretended offense, too distracted as he traces the scar carelessly. “Remember how bad you were freaking out? You got all quiet and didn’t say anything for I don’t know how long and then when you did –”

“I said I didn’t feel anything again,” he says, the amusement faded a little from his voice.

“Because you were in shock. You hit your head pretty hard Nate.” Duke doesn’t mean to upset him, but he won’t act like this isn’t something they have to deal with. The less they acknowledge it the worse it will be if they have to. “You got what, fifteen or twenty stitches?”

Nathan makes that face again, but he stops mid-thought and shoots Duke a skeptical look. “You know all this, Duke. Better than I do, obviously.”

“Yeah, I do. There was something else that night, I never told you about it though.”

“What?”

“We were driving to the hospital and all of a sudden you were talking a mile a minute, being a total asshole. You were dripping blood all over the backseat and you looked like you…well, you kind of looked like you fell out of a second story window and crashed on the roof.”

“I know, I was there,” he huffs, rolling his eyes.

“So I think that’s when I knew I was falling for you, you know? I mean you were rambling about how you were going to go home and do your own stitches and I could help you so we wouldn’t get in trouble. You sounded kind of crazy but I knew I would do it if you really freaked out about it. Even though it was really, really stupid. Because I was kind of in love with you already. Not even kind of. I was just in love with you and I knew you could talk me into all kinds of crazy shit. As long as you wanted me there I’d go along with it.”

Neither of them says anything for a moment and Duke starts to wonder if he should have said anything at all. Maybe it was too much – they don’t really say those things to each other very often. It doesn’t feel like an absence; he would have to be stupid to think Nathan doesn’t care about him and obviously the reverse is true. Sometimes though it feels like high school all over again, his mouth full of words he wants to let out but can’t be sure they would be welcome.

Finally Nathan breaks the silence. “I could talk you into all kinds of crazy shit?”

“Because you were such an angel, right,” Duke laughs, relieved that everything seems normal. At least as normal as it ever gets.

“I guess I shouldn’t have made you take that time to figure it out,” he says, settling tighter against Duke’s side, mouth warm in the crook of his neck. “Is it still the same?”

“Yeah. Always will be.”

It’s one of the things he knows he’ll never lie to Nathan about. He might stretch the truth about some things, omit some key details about what he’s doing or where some of the money comes from, but this is something he never has to doubt. Maybe Geoff was right, maybe he wasn’t. In the end maybe it doesn’t matter. He can’t fix Nathan, if he needs to be fixed at all, and he can’t stop something from happening that he doesn’t even understand. What he can do, probably the only thing he knows he can really do right, is this.

* * *

 _November 2000_

“You sure you can get it?”

“No, Dan. I want you pissed off enough to fire me when I can’t come through.” Duke leans back against the bar on his elbows and hopes like hell that none of the annoyance flooding him is visible on his face. His boss has been a pain in his ass for the last two weeks with no signs of improving and Duke almost regrets mentioning he could maybe procure some less than legal inventory for him.

Almost regrets it. All he really regrets is that Dan has some strange ideas about how smuggling works and the usual combination of fear of getting caught mingled with eagerness to turn a profit. He imagines Duke has a warehouse of contraband somewhere, that he can have something shipped from headquarters overnight and in his hands the next day as if he were some strange combination of Costco and FedEx. He also seems to imagine that this must be a hobby for Duke, because he sure as hell doesn’t expect to pay above cost. Truth be told Duke probably would do it at a loss for fun but the principle of the thing demands otherwise.

Right after Nathan graduated and the last time they saw Geoff, Duke resolved to be done with any work he couldn’t get a W-2 for. Everything between them had been close to perfect just then and it didn’t seem so impossible that he could get things right for once, straighten up for good and find a way to be happy with what he had. After all, it should have been enough for anyone. It felt possible then. Nathan didn’t question his sudden willingness to stay put for the time being, obviously happy enough with Duke’s newfound complacency to question it too closely.

“Are you sure? I thought you were tired of this?” he’d asked, gesturing around their apartment like he felt a little constrained by it as well.

“Never,” Duke pronounced grandly, and he felt like he meant it. That was the problem. He always felt like he meant it at the time. He kept confusing the day to day with the long term and the way he felt about Nathan with everything else, at least partly because he was the only one who noticed they were separate.

It didn’t come back all at once, so for awhile he couldn’t put his finger on what was keeping him up at night or why he would find himself pacing for no reason. He didn’t really want to either. It was one thing to want those things before, but he’d been stupid enough to just about promise Nathan he was over that. Given the choice between going back on that and figuring out a work around, the solution seemed pretty obvious.

“You don’t have to be a smart ass about it,” Dan says petulantly. “I think I’ve been patient.”

Like a kid at Christmas, Duke thinks to himself, but he’s nodding on the outside as if this is a completely reasonable conversation. “You have been. The thing is I can get you things fast or cheap. You expressed an explicit preference for cheap. I’ll see what I can do, but you’re probably a week out from seeing your merchandise.” He puts on his best apologetic smile, trying to ignore the surge of aggravation that accompanies it. “Tell you what, if it’s any later I’ll knock ten percent off your end. That sound fair?”

His look says otherwise, but Dan waves him away and the smugness in his voice suggests he’s at least close to satisfied. “Just about, sure. I’m not paying you to run a part time business behind my bar, you know.”

“Right, of course.” Duke could point out that he got there half an hour early, but there’s not much point in arguing. Instead, he vows for the thousandth time to start looking for a new job and loses himself in mindless prep work. Dan has always been kind of an asshole, but he’s good about days off and while he doesn’t want to pay Duke to run a part time business behind his bar he’s lenient about it on breaks.

The next time he’s paying attention to anything other than making change and small talk Nathan is waving from the end of the bar. He usually stops on his way home from work, but he looks a lot less aggravated than normal. As it turns out there’s not a lot you can do with a history degree other than get another history degree, an education degree, or fight the other hopeless liberal arts majors for what’s left after everyone else is employed. Nathan’s not exactly the Mr. Holland type and he’s already up to his eyes in student loans, so the mysterious sounding materials coordinator job he fell into at the library had seemed like a gift at the time. A year of reshelving and spine stickering later it felt slightly less so. Plus he had to be tired of Duke’s commentary on naughty librarians. Normally by this time he would be bored out of his mind, frustrated or both but tonight he seems practically giddy, and Nathan does not do giddy. Ever.

“That’s not the face of a man who spent his day gluing pockets in library books. What’s up?” Duke passes him a beer and waits with what he hopes is a good impression of patience.

“Remember I told you Jackson called last week, about that book project he’s working on? The flu thing?” Duke has no idea what the flu thing is, but that’s probably because flu epidemics in the 1910s are about as interesting as everything else Nathan spent four years in college learning about. “The grant came through and he needs a research assistant. It would be twice what I made working for him in school.”

“That would be what, four dollars an hour?”

“Very funny.” Nathan tries to look offended, but the crooked half smile won’t leave his face. “Depending on how things go, he’s looking at getting the department chair next year. If he does it could be a permanent thing. And it doesn’t involve magnetic tape. Huge bonus.”

There are times when Duke’s ability to divide his thoughts proves extremely useful, and this is one of them. Outwardly he congratulates Nathan and listens intently as he goes on about his former advisor’s project in a lot of detail that sails over his head, nodding when it seems appropriate and expressing enthusiasm when a pause in the exposition requires it.

The rest of him is busy wondering if he’s going to get a better chance than this to come clean to Nathan. It’s unlikely he’s going to be in a better mood, because he’s clearly ecstatic and Duke knows him well enough to know that the job has to be just about a sure thing if he’s this worked up about it. Without the prospect of something other than the well worn routine of their lives to keep him occupied this feels a little like a prison sentence. In a way, he can just about convince himself, it’s only a fair trade.

Nathan breaks off from his story to finish his beer in a single long drink, still smiling like he can’t make himself stop. “If everything works out I can start before Thanksgiving.”

It’s obvious that Duke has missed a little more narrative than he intended to, so he returns a grin as bright as Nathan’s own and hopes that covers his part of the conversation. “That’s great.”

“You’re sure,” he asks, a flicker of doubt clouding his happiness. “I know you said you wanted to stay, but if –“

“I want to be here. With you. Especially now that you can pay for half the cable.” The tiniest thread of guilt works its way into the back of his thoughts, sharp and unpleasant. Duke doesn’t let it show, banishing it to the outer reaches of his consciousness. Two-thirds of that is unquestionably true and he figures that’s more than most people get.

Besides, a little sugarcoating is well worth the change in Nathan’s expression, a little shift from concern to contentment to something else. He leans over the bar, close enough for Duke to feel the heat of his breath against his ear. “Can you skip out early?”

“Nate, it’s Friday,” he says, not an ounce of conviction in his voice. Nathan hasn’t moved except to slide his hand under the sleeve of Duke’s t-shirt, fingers skimming lazy paths on his skin. When he’s this close it’s hard to talk, let alone tell him no.

“I know,” he sighs, like Duke is being an asshole about it just to spite him. “Break?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing since you got here?”

“Not what you could be doing if you grow a set and tell your boss you’ll be back in fifteen minutes.” His lips finally connect with Duke’s skin, soft brush just under his ear. Nathan usually won’t do this in public, usually doesn’t touch him at all when he’s at work. It’s not that he’s prudish, but neither of them have any idea if it would be a problem or not and little desire to find out. But the combination of his good news and the impending weekend seem to have relaxed that particular worry a little.

“Fifteen minutes? Are you telling me to keep my expectations low so I’m not disappointed?” he laughs, already glancing over his shoulder and scanning the bar for Dan’s presence, excuses and alibis running through his mind. He can’t say no to Nathan, never has been able to and can’t think of a single reason why he would ever want to.

“Can I be honest with you?” he asks, pulling away just enough to look Duke in the eye. His voice is slow and soft, like he has all the time in the world for this and couldn’t care less about how it turns out. “Whatever you need to hear so I can get inside you. Whatever I have to do,” he says, raising his hands like admitting guilt.

Duke doesn’t know what excuse he makes to first waitress he sees, but he hopes it sounds coherent. It’s early and the place is mostly dead anyway, but it’s not like customers three deep would make a compelling difference at the moment. The storage room is dark and empty, like it usually is, but he breathes a sigh of relief anyway as he pushes Nathan inside and locks the door behind him.

“Fifteen minutes starts –” The words die in his throat as Nathan shoves him back against the wall, cutting them off as he hurriedly untucks Duke’s shirt and yanks it over his head. Any reservations about time limits disappear as Nathan’s mouth covers his own hot and wet, tongue pushing inside like he craves the taste of him. He pulls away just enough to breathe, tilting his head to trail kisses across Nathan’s jaw. But Nathan has other ideas and pulls him back into place, a low growl in his throat and the sting of teeth on Duke’s lip the only pause in the eager press of his mouth and the insistent grind of his hips into Duke’s.

The next time he moves it’s to work the button on Nathan’s jeans, and that movement is met with equal disapproval. Nathan grips his wrists and pins them back against the wall, breaking off a kiss and staring hungrily at him. “Don’t be so impatient.”

“Want to touch you,” he complains, words unsteadied by the hardness of Nathan’s touch, a solidity in his grasp that suggests he’s got a plan for this that has nothing to do with whatever Duke happens to want at the moment and everything to do with what he won’t ask for too often.

“Later.” He leans in slow, barely a kiss to the tender soreness on Duke’s lip, tongue grazing the sting. “Think you can shut up and take it for once?”

Duke is almost entirely sure that he can’t, but he focuses on the ragged rise and fall of Nathan’s chest that matches his own and stares at the wet redness of his mouth that makes him want to try. Nathan grins at him again, that same smile that melted him a little before, idly stroking the inside of his wrist with his thumb. “This ok?” he asks, not bothering to wait for an answer as his head dips to suck at Duke’s pulse hard enough to bruise. He knows it is, but he always asks as if Duke might change his mind just this once.

Whatever Duke tries to say comes out as a pathetic cross between a moan and a whine as he rolls his hips into Nathan’s and angles his throat against his mouth. He flexes his wrists against Nathan’s grip, not enough to break away, just testing the tight curl of his fingers. It would be easy to shove him away if he wanted to, because Duke’s been bigger than him since junior high. But then it isn’t Nathan who has to have it this way sometimes and gets antsy if he goes too long without it. They don’t really talk about it, but sometimes Duke wants him to leave marks and make him feel it the next day and Nathan has always been happy to oblige him in that. He knows it’s because of the two years they spent apart, some vague notion that the marks are a promise for the next day and something to remember if it doesn’t happen. But knowing that doesn’t mean it gets him any less stupid with want for it and all evidence suggests that it’s the same for Nathan.

He wraps one hand around both of Duke’s wrists, bringing the other to his face for just a second before it drops to work his pants open and slip inside, stroking maddeningly slow and light. Duke is hard enough to ache, thrusting into Nathan’s hand seeking any friction he can get, but his touch is barely there, slow torture. His thumb strokes over the slit, smoothing through the gathering slickness and Duke’s eyes flutter shut, a low stream of curses the only words he trusts himself to say.

“I don’t have anything,” Nathan murmurs, dropping a kiss in the same spot as out in the bar, just between his ear and jaw.

“Funny,” he grits out between clenched teeth, all the sarcasm lost in the unsteadiness of his voice. “You were talking a big game before.”

Nathan doesn’t answer right away, his attention apparently absorbed by stroking Duke’s cock at a pace designed to elicit begging. “All I said was I don’t have anything,” he says, glancing up at Duke cautiously.

Duke nods without really thinking about, ready to agree to anything that gets Nathan to make good on his promises. But Nathan doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, content to keep him right on the edge, staring at him with a scrutiny that dares him to look away. Waiting like he wants to hear Duke say it.

For a half a second he’s about to crack some joke, but Duke opens his mouth and closes it again, thinking better of it. Instead he stills himself in Nathan’s grip and leans forward just enough to kiss him, soft and open mouthed, carefully undemanding. “Please,” he says, still close enough that their lips touch again as he speaks.

Asking may have been calculated, but the whimper that escapes him as Nathan strokes him one last time and moves his hand away is entirely unintentional. He presses index and middle fingers against Duke’s lips, pushing inside gently. “Suck.”

It takes a lot to make Duke blush, enough that he can’t think of the last time it happened. But it’s happening now, hot blood flushing his cheeks as he takes Nathan’s fingers in his mouth and sucks like they were his cock, tongue skimming over the bitter salt of his own precome on Nathan’s skin. It’s fucking _embarrassing_ , not just doing it but doing it eagerly, realizing that Nathan is watching in approval and having that realization spread through him like broken glass in his veins, sharp sparkling spread of heat and need. For a second he’s disappointed when Nathan pulls away again, but his hand is replaced instantly with his mouth hard and insistent on Duke’s, kissing him like he might die without it. The second Nathan lets go of his wrists Duke’s hands are on his face, tangled in his hair, more clinging than he intends but there’s nothing he can do but hold on desperately.

“Duke,” he says, words a distant rasp against the rush of _moremoremore_ crashing through Duke’s head. “You want this or not?” There’s an undercurrent in Nathan’s voice that suggests he doesn’t want or expect to hear a single word, so he just nods, just once.

Nathan pushes him back, turning him to face the wall and Duke braces himself with palms flattened against plaster. He’s pretty sure it’s going to be more than a little uncomfortable. But he can’t care because Nathan’s shoving his jeans out of the way and working his fingers inside him with very little ceremony, sliding in fast and hard and just this side of painful. Duke tries to look back over his shoulder, trying to catch Nathan’s mouth , but fingers twist in his hair and jerk his head around, forcing his cheek against the coolness of the paint. Nathan holds him there like that, working him open hard and fast, fingers skimming the right spot almost but not quite. Just enough to make Duke push back against him and bite the inside of his cheek to stifle the cry that tries to get out.

“Then do what you’re told,” Nathan growls, tongue flickering out against Duke’s ear chasing the words.

He tries, really honestly tries to, but patience is not one of Duke’s more prominent virtues and his cock is so hard that he thinks he’s going to pass out if Nathan doesn’t get on with it. “Jesus fucking Christ, Nate, come on. I can’t….just fucking do it, please.” There’s only a second to regret begging, the briefest awareness that once Nathan knows he can get this out of him he’ll do it again and then the acknowledgement that Duke is more than ok with that.

Then Nathan’s fingers are gone and Duke lets out soft moan, either at the absence or the sound of jeans being unzipped. He hears Nathan spit in his hand, knows he must be slicking himself with it, but he’s dying to see it himself instead of the cracked white wall that fills up his vision. He closes his eyes instead, shuts himself off to anything other than the dull ache in his scalp where Nathan’s still got a vicious handful of his hair. Nathan’s cock feels hot enough to burn, settled tight against him but not quite pushing in yet and he shudders at the feel of it. They’ve always used condoms before, he assumes mostly because both of them always did with girls and old habits die hard whether they make sense or not. It didn’t matter much before, but Duke is willing to bet they never bother with them again. It feels too good this way, both the naked hard warmth and the knowledge that there’s nothing between them, just skin on skin.

Nathan sinks into him without warning, one sharp thrust all the way home and Duke has to bite his lip hard to keep from coming right there. There’s no reprieve, just Nathan’s hips snapping into him with a brutal rhythm, fucking him hard and deep like he doesn’t expect to last like this any longer than Duke does. It burns a little, the too tight pull and drag against too little slickness, but it feels insanely good, like Duke is going to feel it all night like Nathan’s still inside him. That thought pushes anything else out of his head for half a second and all he can do is push back against Nathan, movements begging for more, matching his words.

Nathan’s teeth sink into the soft skin of Duke’s neck, high enough that they both know it will leave a mark he won’t be able to hide. Duke sighs “harder,” not sure anymore exactly what he’s asking for, just more of everything, as much as either of them can give or take. Nathan obliges him, slamming into him hard enough that his breath catches in his throat and everything goes dark for a moment, biting down on an already rising bruise on his shoulder. There’s a moment when everything feels suspended in time, frozen around the pleasure coursing up through him to meet the pain blossoming like there’s nothing but where they’re joined together. Then the skin breaks, Duke feels the welling blood and Nathan breathing his name against it, hot breath from bloody lips. It’s too much and he’s done, coming without so much as a hand on his cock. He pulses around Nathan as he comes, arrhythmic flutter and seize that push Nathan over the edge. Nathan rides it out, moving slow and steady inside him, hot rush that wrenches cries from both of them. When it’s over he stays inside Duke for long moments before pulling out, leaning against him like standing on his own might be a challenge. Which is fine, because Duke wants him close like this, all warmth and affection, reverence in the hands that skim across the ridges of his ribcage and in half-formed words mouthed against the top of his spine.

“You ok?” he finally asks, his voice still a little ragged. He traces the ugly bite mark on Duke’s shoulder with careful fingers, skimming the edges. “This looks like it hurts.”

“It does,” Duke admits, the sting of it finally pushing to the front of his awareness.

“Sorry,” he says, lowering his mouth to the redness and licking over it like he’s tasting the mingled blood and sweat. “Maybe you should skip out early?”

Duke knows if he doesn’t push him away now that there won’t be any arguing with him, no matter how much he would rather give in. He shrugs Nathan off and puts himself to rights as much as he can before turning to wrap his arms around him and kiss him sweet and unhurried, like he’s been wanting to. “You can’t always get what you want. Besides, just because you’ve got a big job now doesn’t mean I can get fired.”

“You can get another job,” he offers, looking up at him with laughter in his eyes. “I mean, I can think of a couple of things you’re pretty good at.”

He almost chickens out, doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t want to ruin it. But Nathan is in the best mood he’s been in for weeks, sated stupid and lazy and that’s exactly the kind of mood Duke is pretty sure he has to be in to be ok with this. “Speaking of which…”

Nathan quirks an eyebrow at him, some of the lazy contentment leaving his face. “What?”

“Dan maybe has a job for me. Something kind of…under the table, I guess. It’s no big deal, but there’s some money in it and I thought if you don’t mind…” He’s not entirely sure where he’s going with this, hoping Nathan will interrupt him with encouragement and leave it at that.

The skeptical look on his face suggests another response all together. “I thought you were ok with this. With being here.”

“I am. I just get bored, you know?” He takes it as a good omen that Nathan hasn’t pulled away, just watches him with worry tinged with annoyance. “I get stir crazy and that fixes it.”

“But you said you were over that.”

He shrugs. “Kind of. I miss it sometimes.”

“I thought we agreed that you weren’t going to take stupid risks like this.”

 _No,_ Duke thinks to himself, trying to ignore the protest that tries to rise, _you agreed_. Instead he nods like he’s thinking it over. “It’s not really a risk though. Just some stuff for the bar he can’t get in the States. No big deal.”

“Duke,” he starts, pausing for a minute like he’s not entirely sure what to say. There’s a fragile edge in his voice, brittle and poorly hidden as he tries to sound unconcerned. “Don’t do anything to screw this up, ok?”

“I won’t.” Duke kisses him again, all of the need from before surging back inside him. “I promise I know what I’m doing.”

“I know, but it’s not like you can guarantee that nothing is going to go wrong. It has before.”

“That was a long time ago,” he says, biting back the urge to remind Nathan that he’s not an idiot kid anymore and he did just fine without his supervision for a long time. “You can trust me.”

Nathan laughs at that, hardly any humor in the sound. “You’re telling me you’re going to start committing felonies on a regular basis and you want me to trust you.”

“None of that has anything to do with you though.” He pushes Nathan’s hair out of his face, skimming his fingers down over the lines of his cheek and over his jaw. Normally he would tilt his face into that touch, maybe catch Duke’s hand and press his lips to his palm, but this time the frustration stays. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, Nathan making him feel like the world’s biggest asshole for even bringing it up. If it doesn’t fly now, he knows it won’t, ever. And that knowledge twists inside him, disappointment struggling to take him over. “Does it really matter?”

“Not the smuggling. I don’t give a shit about that. But that you could get caught? Yeah. I’m sorry.” The thing is he really does sound like he means it, like he would like nothing better than to tell Duke it’s ok. “Just promise me you’re not going to take any chances that will get you in real trouble.”

His first instinct is to agree and that catches him off guard, because Duke has no intention of keeping that promise. He doesn’t lie to Nathan, except when he does, which is more and more often lately. In reality he’s already lying just by asking his permission as if he was really waiting for it. But Nathan is being completely unfair about the whole thing, Duke tells himself. There’s no downside to this, no loss for him. It’s not like Duke is proposing a murder spree and asking for help hiding the bodies.

“Ok,” he says, tightening his hold on Nathan, pulling him close like he can make up for the lie this way. “I promise I’ll be careful this time. And nothing bigger.”

“Thank you,” he says, pressing a kiss to the darkening bruise on Duke’s neck. “I should let you get back.”

“Probably. I think your fifteen minutes ran over just a little.” Duke waits for the guilt to flood him, to feel like a complete and utter shit, but it doesn’t come. At least not yet. “I’ll try to get out a little early.”

“Ok.” Nathan reaches for the door, pausing with his hand on it. He turns back toward Duke, catching his hand and looking apologetic enough that the guilt finally does kick in, just a little. “I’m not trying to be a jerk.”

“I never said you were.”

“It’s just if something goes wrong, or you get in over your head…” He shrugs, like it should be obvious to anyone why he’s right. “I don’t want to lose you again. That’s all.”

“You won’t,” he says, hoping it sounds convincing. That promise he’s pretty sure he can keep, but it’s not as if it’s entirely up to him.

* * *

 _December 2000_

“So tell me again; why are you suddenly the ghost of Christmas past?”

“I don’t know. Why does it matter? Besides,” Duke laughs, “you really think I’m here to remind you to be a decent human being?” He sort of wished that actually was the case. He doesn’t have any especially warm fuzzy feelings about the holidays and never really has. They were never a big deal when he was a kid and it’s not like he and Nathan have family to go home to. They’ve never gone to the tree lighting before and Nathan has been riding him about it all week, reminding him that they don’t even put up a tree of their own. The truth of it is that Duke is supposed to meet a contact here, the kind that he promised Nathan he would avoid, the decidedly not-ok-probably-a-felony-makes-his-pulse-race-almost-as-hard-as-Nathan-does thing that he’s supposed to have given up. While he definitely has to wonder about the guy’s sense of whimsy in choosing a meeting place it does make sense – Quincy Market is crowded with families and couples on dates, and it’s as good a place as any to slip in and out a crowd. Besides, he’s done a few jobs for Kelly before and if there’s anything Duke’s taken away from that experience it’s that the fewer questions asked the better.

“Sure, why not?” He’s not quite paying attention, taking in the rush around them more than listening to anything Duke is saying. There’s a part of Nathan that loves this kind of thing and Duke is a little annoyed with himself that he hasn’t picked up on it before. He hates missing anything about him. There should be no blank spaces in the considerably sized Nathan file Duke keeps in his head.

“I don’t know. Seems like I’d make a pretty lousy moral compass cricket.”

“Duke, seriously? It’s only a cricket in the cartoon.” He offers him the last of the coffee he’s been drinking before finishing it himself. The look on his face suggests it went cold a while ago. “Besides, I could do worse.”

“You think?” It’s nice to think he believes it, whether or not it’s true. Maybe he really could do worse. After all, when Duke’s not castigating himself about it he has to admit that maybe, just maybe, Nathan is being a tiny bit unreasonable about where black and white lines fall. It’s not like he’s killed anyone or stolen food from the mouths of orphans. Like Rizzo, there are worse things he could do.

“Yeah, I do. You know you’re not anywhere near as bad as you like to think you are.” He leans in quick, cold lips brushing over Duke’s cheekbone and gone again almost before he has time to feel them. Nathan looks at him for a moment, some kind of mental calculus going on behind his eyes that Duke can’t quite read. “It was a long time ago,” he says softly, just barely meeting his eyes. “You should let it go.”

Duke would love for this to be one of those times where he has exactly the right thing on the tip of his tongue, something graceful that they’ll both remember years later, something special. Instead he stares back at Nathan, completely unprepared for the words he stopped waiting for a long time ago.

“I don’t think I can,” he says, not quite meaning to. Stupid, he thinks, but it’s out and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“You should.” Nathan clears his throat and in an instant it’s obvious that the conversation is over.

Duke knows they won’t talk about it again, maybe not ever. Less than twenty words is all Nathan has ever said to him about when they were kids and it’s more than likely all he will. In that moment it’s all he can do to keep everything from coming out, spilling everything and finally having it be over one way or another. He imagined that conversation a thousand times and it always ended with a huge weight lifting off his back and a clear conscience. Instead he feels like shit, like this is the last thing he deserves for all the lies he’s told over the last couple of months. Nathan would be pissed, he knows that, maybe pissed enough to kick him out and change the locks but probably not. They’ve never been that angry at each other and there’s been cause to be on both sides before; after all, they’ve been friends a long time. He can’t think of anything that would stop the way he feels about this, but he’s not Nathan. Still, Nathan’s forgiven him for worse. He just did.

“Nathan, I –”

Whatever he was going to confess is cut off by a swell of sound from the crowd around them and the rise of Christmas music as the lights begin to come on, a wash of glowing light pushing aside the glare of fluorescents. Nathan isn’t listening, glancing between the spectacle and someone waving to him through the crowd, a couple Duke thinks he recognizes as people Nathan graduated with, the woman balancing a heavily wrapped baby on her hip. When he does look back it’s more apparent than ever that the conversation is over, neatly sealed away again and not to be disturbed. “Want to go say hi?”

“I’ll be over in a minute. I should have taken you up on the coffee when it was hot. Go ahead, I’ll find you.”

Nathan doesn’t wait for an answer and he watches him blend into the crowd, distinct only for a moment or two before he’s one more winter coat and stupid hat in a sea of bodies. At a distance it’s like there’s hardly any difference at all between anyone.

* * *

Later Duke will have time to regret being able to watch Nathan from the meeting place. It’s second nature to him by now, something he knows he’s done since they were in high school and will probably do until he’s too old to actually see much of anything. He remembers the first time he realized he was doing it, staring at the movement of his hand across a math exam and the line of his profile bent over the page in concentration. Nathan aced that one; Duke finished two-thirds of the test and barely passed it. Times like now it’s almost a compulsion, watching him for signs that he can see right through Duke. It seems like he should be able to, when he really thinks about it. Nathan knows him better than anyone and it would make it a hell of a lot easier if he could just read his mind, call him on his bullshit before he ever had a chance to screw up. Obviously it would be easier for everyone involved if Nathan were just a little less attached to what he perceived to be a universal code of ethics, but if there was an alternative that involved a bit of prescience on his part Duke would be more than happy to accept it.

It’s not exactly hard to look at him, despite his frustrating lack of foresight. Watching him talk to other people always fascinates Duke because Nathan is never entirely the same then as he is when it’s just the two of them. He’s nodding along to whatever his friends are saying, charming the baby with ridiculous faces, oblivious that he’s being watched. There’s a layer of reserve that’s almost tangible and certainly visible, a rigidity that bleeds out when they’re alone. Nathan pulls away from most people, subtly enough that they don’t notice, but enough that Duke can’t miss it. That distance bothers him; it’s not like he wants Nathan to push other people away. He doesn’t expect to be the center of his world or the only person he gets close to. That would be unfair and maybe more than a little creepy. But he is, and although he shouldn’t like it, part of him does. Maybe there’s something wrong with him, but the world is full for him when it’s just the two of them. Anyone else becomes excess after a few hours, extra puzzle pieces with the wrong shapes that don’t fit into the seamless edges between them.

He doesn’t mean to be lost in his head, probably looking like an idiot when Kelly turns up, although he is with it enough to be a little annoyed that he’s late. It’s been chronic since the first job Duke did for him and he sees it for exactly what it is – Kelly wants to set the terms, establish who’s in charge. Which is fine, Duke could care less about playing politics with the guy. He pays well and getting local work makes keeping up the façade at home a lot easier.

As soon as Duke realizes someone is standing next to him expectantly he turns off the gaze, adjusts his eyes to nonchalance and puts on an all business face. It’s a quick revision, something almost imperceptible, but he tries to keep this separate from himself.

“Who’s your friend?”

Not imperceptible enough, he thinks to himself as he tries to do a better job of hiding his annoyance and the flare of nervousness that runs through him. These people aren’t his friends; they aren’t even what you could reasonably call colleagues. He doesn’t know most of them at all, let alone well, but that’s how it has to be for a lot of reasons. Mutual protection, for one. If it came down to him and any one of the people he’s done business with he would save his own skin in a heartbeat without even having to think about it. He would expect them to do the same, of course, so it wasn’t as mercenary as it sounded. Everyone was happier with as little shared information as possible, general locations, disposable phone numbers. He’s done half a dozen jobs for Kelly, small time stuff and unopened boxes, but even now all Duke really knows about him is that he pays on time and has an air about him that suggests he’s no one he wants to annoy.

The other reason for preferring relative anonymity was a little closer to home, a little more pressing. Knowledge was power, just like the faded poster over his world history teacher’s desk had said, and known connections were leverage. There’s not a lot you can hold over someone with no discernable family or friends beyond themselves, and while self preservation is a great motivator it’s not quite the same. Duke remembers how angry his father was the one and only time he interrupted a meeting with one of his clients. At the time he assumed what any kid would, that his father was a jerk who failed to understand his worldly maturity and readiness to embark on a life of crime at ten. Now he gets it more than he wants to.

He glances back in Nathan’s direction, focusing on a pretty blonde girl in a ridiculous fur trimmed hat a few feet to his left. Duke has never seen before in his life. If anyone tries to connect the two of them she’ll turn out to be a dead end, no harm no foul. “Just looking, unfortunately. She’s not with me,” he says easily, pulling the cash from his pocket that he hopes will prove an adequate distraction from friends real or imagined. “You didn’t want to meet to talk about my friends, did you?”

Some of the people he does business with strike him as completely unremarkable. Somebody’s father, somebody’s wife, someone who just wants to do business and go back to whatever makes up the rest of their lives. Some of them are like him, or like he would be without Nathan, and this is their life. It’s not hard to see it on them no matter what kind of neutral appearance they try to put on. They like the chase, the potential for getting caught and the rush of getting away with it.

Some of them, a small but considerable percentage, make his skin crawl. For the most part these are the jobs he promised Nathan he wouldn’t take, but they’re also usually the ones with the bigger pay off and he’d be lying if he said part of him didn’t enjoy the persistent nagging that this was a little dangerous that nudges the edge of his brain. There’s something sweeter about getting away with it under those circumstances, the satisfaction of not only pulling off whatever deal he’s made, but getting away with his skin intact.

Normally he’d be a little high on that rush right now, because this one definitely falls into that last category, cold eyes that don’t even try to mask the calculating going on behind them and unnerve Duke a little bit even though they’re not focused on him. He doesn’t do business with Kelly because he likes him and wouldn’t do business with him if he did. He’s still looking across the courtyard as they talk, making sure Duke sees that he’s doing it, and a little thread of uncertainty runs through his nerves like they’re a highway for worry delivery. They don’t talk for more than four or five minutes, because that’s all it takes. There wouldn’t be a face to face meeting if they couldn’t agree on the basics of their arrangement, although he was less than pleased with Kelly’s assumption and insistence that he’d do the job for what amounted to almost nothing. He doesn’t argue his terms, normally lays them out and either accepts or walks. It wasn’t like other people hadn’t tried to screw him down on his fee, but usually they bluster or sweet talk and eventually give up. Kelly is different though, never changes the flat tone of his voice or even sounds like he’s very interested in the outcome, just pushes. Hard. Given the circumstances, the only reasonable response to that pushing is to cave, no matter how annoying it feels.

After the details are ironed out and a few parting pleasantries required for civil conversation Kelly disappears back into the crowd. Duke stays frozen where he stands, trying to find him in the sea of bodies with little luck. He fucked up and he knew it – he never should have done this with Nathan in tow, no matter how sure he was that he’d pinned his contact’s attention on some oblivious girl in the crowd. His first instinct is to leave, walk a few blocks in the wrong direction and call Nathan with some excuse for why he needs to come pick him up. He could stretch the truth a little, somehow, but Nathan wasn’t stupid. He would put two and two together and Duke couldn’t think of a single good way to explain how or why he’d put him at risk like that. He couldn’t really explain it to himself, although he suspected arrogance had a lot to do with it. Usually times like this he felt a little invincible, a little smarter than everyone else because this was what he knew he was good at. Now all he felt was the weight of his stupid mistake crushing down on him.

He debates for a few more minutes before pulling out his phone, the one that’s just for business that Nathan doesn’t have the number for and knows better than to ask about. He dials the number quickly from memory; he never writes their information down if he can help it, leaving no record behind other than in his head. He holds the phone slightly away from his ear, straining to hear a ringtone over the noise of music, laughter and distant traffic. But if he’s is still in the vicinity Duke can’t pick up anything distinct in the dull roar around him, and before he gets a chance to look around again he hears the phone pick up.

“You’re a little clingier than usual, Duke.” The voice on the other end is just as smooth and distant as always, unconcerned and maybe just a little impatient. “What can I do for you?”

“Things have changed.”

“Really, in the last ten minutes? That’s surprising coming from someone as dependable as you’ve been.”

Duke tries to make his own voice as disinterested, stripping it of anything other than nonchalance. “That’s nice to hear. And I apologize, but I’m not going to be able to handle those items for you. I could put you in contact with someone who can, and –”

“I don’t work with strangers, you know that. I hired you, I want you to handle it.” There’s a threat there beneath the carelessly spoken words, as obvious as it is subtle. “I’m sure I can come up with something to persuade you.”

“Not likely.” Duke would like to believe he’s unaffected by that threat, but his eye snap to Nathan again, whose still standing there talking to his friend without a care in the world. “But like I said, I could suggest someone else.”

“Not necessary. I imagine you’ll come around.”

Before he can answer the line goes dead. He stares stupidly at the phone for a moment, as if he can see something there that will make everything reassuring somehow, or just make sense.

* * *

When Duke pulls himself together and makes his way back, coffee in hand, Nathan is already saying goodbye to his friends. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about anything around them, just kids running around, Christmas music drowning out anything farther than a few feet away. It’s so normal that Duke can almost convince himself he’s overreacting and that it’s just having Nathan here that sets his teeth on edge like this. He thought maybe the caffeine would settle the nervous energy ricocheting through him, but if anything he’s more tightly wound than he was before. Instead he offers the cup to Nathan, who accepts it gladly despite making a face as he swallows. “Next time you should try a little coffee in your sugar.”

“So sorry.”

“What’s going on?” There’s no accusation in his voice, but it’s obvious that Nathan isn’t oblivious to the tension strung through him.

“Too much Christmas?” he offers, letting out a humorless laugh they both hear fall flat. “It’s nothing. I’m just tired.”

“It’s that guy you were talking to, isn’t it?” Nathan scans the crowd like Duke was a few minutes ago but comes up with the same nothing. “He freaked you out.”

“You noticed that.” Of course he did. As it turns out Nathan should be worried about him because apparently he’s getting sloppier than he realized. “A little.”

For a moment neither of them says anything, just looking at each other appraisingly. Duke is never sure how much of this he can trust Nathan with. He can trust him, obviously, but there’s never been a clear indication of how much of the other parts of Duke’s life he’s willing to take on and be involved with. And if he wasn’t mixed up in this now there would be nothing to freak out about.

“Because of me?”

“Because of you.” Duke’s not sure what to say that doesn’t sound like an accusation of his own or threaten the remarkable lack of anger coming from Nathan. Honesty isn’t exactly comfortable or advantageous here but he doesn’t have much else to work with. “I guess I was distracted, watching you, and he noticed. You don’t have to worry about it. I’m pretty sure I convinced him I was checking out some girl standing by you.”

He quirks an eyebrow at that, something in his expression that Duke can’t figure out. “Crazy hat girl? You got some random girl involved with this guy that creeped you out so bad?”

“Not involved, just a distraction. It shouldn’t be an issue anyway, but I didn’t mean to get you involved in anything. I should have come by myself.”

“But you didn’t.” He doesn’t push for more and Duke is starting to think that this is almost worse than just being told where he’s screwed up. “Why?”

“Because I’m kind of an idiot, Nathan. Is that what you’re looking for?” Duke rakes a hand through his hair and stares up at the sky like there might be some kind of cheat sheet up there, glaring when he finds none. “It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. In and out in five minutes.”

“You said you weren’t going to do this. The ones like this.” There’s no anger in it, just resignation flat and dull. Nathan doesn’t even spare him a glance, just turns to walk back to the truck like it’s not worth his time to say more.

It’s infuriating, worse because Duke is almost certain that Nathan can’t be angrier with him than he is with himself. He wants to fight about it but there’s nothing convincing he can think of to say in his defense. “They’re all like this,” he finally says, more petulantly than he intended.

“Sorry?” Nathan stops in his tracks and spins toward him, and it’s obvious that Duke isn’t the only one looking for that fight.

“They’re all like this.” He shrugs, trying to make his face as indifferent as Nathan’s is. “You know they’re all like this. Maybe I don’t get a weird vibe off of all of them, but yeah. They’re not always nice people. That’s why I don’t ask them to come out for a beer afterward. So you can get pissed at me all you want, but you’re smart enough to know that. You don’t want to know about it and I should have made sure you didn’t have to. Just don’t act like you had no idea, ok?”

“You said you wouldn’t do these kinds of jobs.” Nathan’s tone is perfectly even, like they were talking about forgetting to pay the water bill or something equally uninteresting, but there’s an edge to it that suggests the wisest thing to do would be shut up and take the silent treatment for a day or two. “You promised.”

“Because this was the alternative.”

“Having to deal with me?”

“Yeah. Having to deal with you bitching about it like you’re up on some moral pedestal because you don’t get your hands dirty. Which is fine, I never asked you to.” Some deeply buried logical part of Duke is telling him to quit while he’s ahead, because he doesn’t know where some of this is coming from. It feels true, like he’s wanted to say it for a while, but just because something is true doesn’t automatically mean you should say it. That small, shouting part of himself urges him to take it back while he can, say he’s worried or angry or just tired and can they talk about it later. It would be easier that way, like it always is. They always talk about it later, whatever it is, push it back until it’s forgotten and easy to ignore. That works for Nathan and always has, the vast internal filing system he uses to catalog everything unpleasant in his life, but Duke can’t ever get that stuff all the way down. It just scratches at the surface, trying to get out, always stabbing at the edge of his thoughts and looking for a way to the surface. Maybe that’s what it’s like for Nathan too; he doesn’t know. It’s one more thing they don’t talk about. “You want to claim some kind of high ground because of what I do, but what the hell does that make you? You live with me, you let me help you through college, you sleep with me. What does that say about you, Nate?”

Nathan stares at him blankly, long enough for Duke to realize that he hasn’t considered that until now. It almost makes him laugh, because he’s thought about it more and more lately. He can’t think about much of anything else. Instead he just looks back, refusing to look away because he’s not going to admit that they wouldn’t be having this argument in the first place if it wasn’t for him. It’s a short walk to where they parked, just a few blocks, but the silence between them makes it stretch out like miles.

Two days later they’re talking almost like normal again, but the strain is still there pulling like newly healed skin over an open cut. On the third day Duke wakes up long after Nathan has gone to work to find a wrinkled copy of the _Globe_ left on the kitchen counter where Nathan knows he’ll see it. There’s a large picture of a pretty girl in a ridiculous looking hat on the front page, right under a headline that says she was killed the night of the tree lighting in Quincy Market. It takes Duke a second to get from the picture to the text because he’s trying to remember why she seems familiar and his sleep fogged brain refuses to cooperate.

When it comes together he drops the paper and makes it to the bathroom just in time to throw up until his skin is damp with sweat and his hands shake.

* * *

 _February 2000_

The other phone rings all week and Duke doesn’t answer it once. In the end he caved, delivered the package for Kelly and didn’t say a word when his takeaway was about half of what they’d agreed on. He was bright enough to know when to argue and when to consider it a lesson learned. Then the phone was ringing again and there was an assumption in place that the arrangement would continue. Saying he wasn’t interested didn’t seem to make much of an impact. Kelly leaves messages and they don’t bother Duke much at first – he doesn’t care if he knows the bar where he works or his boss’ number. That’s amateur stuff, about as intimidating as saying he has access to the yellow pages. It isn’t until the voicemail with Nathan’s plate number and the building he works in that Duke starts to think this is going to be a problem. He’s had asshole clients before, people who tried to bully him because he’s young and, they assume, inexperienced and easy to scare. But they were all small time, little fish who thought they were a big deal. This is different, and while it makes him resolve to do his research before sooner rather than later from now on, that doesn’t do much to extract them from this mess. Kelly wants an errand boy and Duke is determined not to give him one. He got into this to avoid having to answer to anyone himself and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let anybody take that away from him. Righteous anger aside, he’s not sure how to avoid that short of first degree murder.

He would swear he’s not burying his head in the sand, but he knows he’s not doing anything else either. He gets up, goes to work, comes home and sticks to a routine like he loves it, like he lives for order and repetition. A week ago he turned the phone off and pushed it as far out of his mind as he can. Yesterday way to work he stood on the edge of the docks a few blocks away from the bar and turned it over and over in his hand, even stretched his arm out over the water a few times. In the end he shoved it back into his pocket and walked away.

The same night he left the newspaper on the counter Nathan came home with the kind of look on his face that said he was ready to tear into him about it. Instead after one look at Duke he was apologizing like he was the one that screwed up, pulling him into his arms and telling him it was ok like it was really true.

“It’s not your fault,” he repeated, words as soft as his mouth against Duke’s ear. “You didn’t know what would happen. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry, it’s not your fault.” Nathan holds him like he might crumble and his hands are the only thing keeping him together, touches him like he wants to for the first time in days.

It would have been nice if Duke could shake the feeling that he was trying to convince himself as well. Things aren’t ok between them and haven’t been since that day. He has no idea how to fix it, can’t undo any of it and can’t think of a single thing that would make it better.

He thinks about leaving more than once, just packing up the minimal things he’s acquired in the last three years and going. It makes him sick, but then everything does now and he’s almost sure that the best thing he could give Nathan now is his absence. It would be bad that way for both of them, but maybe not as bad as the inertia of waiting clueless and paranoid for a disaster that might never come. Nathan seems to think that it ended with the girl, but he doesn’t know about the ceaselessly ringing phone or even the kind of persistence at work here. Kelly will keep pushing until Duke gives in because that’s how you get people at your beck and call; break them once and own them forever. If he honestly believed that he could walk away from here without retribution, for him or for Nathan, Duke would be long gone by now.

Or at least he tells himself that he would be. In reality he suspects he’s a little too selfish for that to actually happen. There are a thousand reasons to stay and only one to go, no matter how compelling. Life without Nathan isn’t a distant memory for him and in the last week or so it’s become more and more vivid, waking him up at night and creeping into his awareness when sleep won’t come. It’s time that would be better spent figuring out what the hell he can do to get them out of this, but the only solution he can come up with is one Nathan won’t go for. Leaving is the only thing that makes sense, but he can’t talk to Nathan about it. Can’t talk to him about any of it without sacrificing the uneasy truce they’ve settled into. Duke knows it’s a little pathetic, but he can’t convince himself that his peace of mind is worth that sacrifice. Instead he dwells on it and gets nowhere, like he is now, his mind a million miles away from the stairs leading to their apartment.

The sound of breaking glass and something heavy hitting the ground startle him out of his thoughts, although it takes a minute to put together that those noises are coming from the fourth floor. Duke has never been more grateful for the permanent darkness on the stairwell as he creeps up the last steps and into the poorly lit hallway outside their door. He probably didn’t need to bother sneaking up, since the volume and frequency of smashing doesn’t decrease as he approaches, but he’s careful anyway, peering around the corner as he hopes it’s anyone else’s apartment.

Their door is wide open, but no one is immediately visible inside. It looks like a small tornado has torn through the living room tossing everything in its path. Nathan’s desk is tipped over and emptied onto the floor, a blizzard of old papers and junk mail. Books and cds are scattered everywhere in the ruin of their makeshift bookshelves. The only things even close to worth stealing, an ancient TV and a cheap stereo, are lying in pieces. The kitchen is trashed as well, refrigerator door hanging on its hinges and the shattered remains of food, plates and glasses covering the floor. It’s not a robbery; that would have been a huge relief. It’s intimidation, a calling card that says we know where you live and we can get in whenever we want. And after everything else, it honestly just pisses him off more than anything else.

He steps through the debris toward the closet off the living room, carefully avoiding anything that will give him away. Nathan always made fun of him for keeping a baseball bat stowed behind winter coats and the vacuum cleaner that doesn’t get used often enough, asking if maybe they were switched at birth because that was definitely something out of the chief’s playbook. He makes a mental note to gloat about it later as he moves around the contents of the closet as quietly as he can.

“Looking for this?”

Duke closes his eyes and breathes a silent curse before pushing the door closed behind him and turning to face Kelly. He hasn’t seen the other man since the day in Quincy Market, the last delivery made to a proxy, but everything remains the same, the air of disinterest at odds with the hardness in his eyes. “Yeah, thanks. This place is a mess. Impossible to find anything in here.”

“I thought I’d be gone before you turned up here. But as long as I’m here…” He sits casually on the arm of the couch as if they’re not surrounded by the wreckage of everything one of them calls home. “You’ve been awfully difficult to reach.”

“You know how the holidays are.” Duke leans against the wall as if he doesn’t have a care in the world and tries to ignore the way his heart pounds. He’s known for a while that this was going beyond Kelly wanting to screw him out of a paycheck, but that reality has been forced to the back of his mind because it’s unfamiliar territory and he has no clue how to deal with it. Or maybe he does, but it’s way beyond the boundaries of a little smuggling here and there. He’s not sure it’s beyond what he can live with, but he’s certain it’s more than Nathan can.

 _This is your problem, Duke,_ he thinks, all but rolling his eyes at his own stupidity. _This wouldn’t even be happening if you didn’t have your head so far up his ass._ Maybe Nathan has been right all along, that there’s a clear impossibility in reconciling these things. After all of it Duke is just about positive that he is and always has been the smart one.

“I do. But if we’re going to keep doing business I’m going to expect a little more professionalism than this.”

“I thought I was pretty clear about my desire to be out of business with you.”

Kelly sighs, the look of a disappointed parent fixed on his face. He’s turning the bat slowly in his hands, looking down at it in what seems to be great interest. “That’s not what I want to hear.”

“Well, you know what they say. You can’t always get what you want.” Duke shrugs off his coat and tosses his keys onto the table, hoping to feign an indifference he’s been desperately trying to feel. “I guess you’re going to have to get someone else to run your errands. What are you going to do, come back and toss the place again?”

“Believe me, it’s the principle of the thing, Duke, not your special talents. You’re greener than you think you are. Speaking of which,” he says, nodding toward the mess of broken glass and pictures frames near his feet, “I think we both know there are other ways to reason with you.”

“He has nothing to do with any of this. He doesn’t even know about it.” Duke is on his feet before he knows he’s moving, hands fisted in Kelly’s coat before he has time to think better of it. “You want to screw with me, screw with me, but that’s where it ends.”

He’s got at least four or five inches on Kelly and probably forty pounds, but a size advantage isn’t much of an answer to the wide end of a baseball bat to the stomach. The first strike knocks the wind out of him and the second is higher, hitting his ribs with a sickening crack that sends a sharp burst of pain spiraling through him. Duke drops to his knees hard before sharp fingers twist in his hair and jerk his head up.

“You’re right about one thing,” he says conversationally, no change in his expression as he tosses the bat aside and turns back toward him. “I’ll screw with you, or your boyfriend, whenever I feel like it. Eventually you’ll get it through your head that once you fuck up with me, you’re done. You’ll come around. Everyone does, sooner or later. I don’t mind if it’s later, but you will. But I’ve got all the time in the world.”

There are a number of things Duke could say that would be smarter than what he goes with, but few that would be more satisfying. “Fuck you.”

The last time Duke got hit in the face was in ninth grade. Kevin Ryan waited for him after gym class while everyone else was changing and nailed him in the mouth for taking his girlfriend up to the bluffs. It hurt like crazy and Nathan reminded him he deserved it every time he complained. This is a lot worse, knuckles connecting with his cheekbone hard enough to make him see stars and go blurry for a moment. He doesn’t have much time to reflect on the comparison, or a chance to get in any offense of his own, because Kelly aims a kick at the same place he jabbed him with the bat and if his ribs weren’t broken before they sure as hell are now. It keeps coming, the smaller man crouching over him and raining blows down on him almost methodically, as if it might be a little boring for him. Individual hits bleed into a constant rush and recession of pain, and the last coherent thing Duke thinks before things start to go hazy is that this was a movie he would have totally spit the blood flooding his mouth right in Kelly’s eyes.

The next thing he’s really aware of is a grotesque crunching sound and something between a groan and a cry. The blows stop and Kelly’s weight shifts off of him, then he hears that sound twice more, each repetition a little duller sounding. Wet sounding.

He opens his eyes to Nathan kneeling next to him, hands hovering just above him like he’s afraid to touch. “Are you ok?”

For once he suppresses the sarcasm that wants to come out and just nods. “Yeah, I think so. Not going to be too pretty for a while, but I’ll be fine.” He’s not sure how much of an understatement that is; every breath feels like his lungs are on fire and his face is a mess, but otherwise bruising will be the worst of it. “What did you…?”

He tries to prop himself up on his elbows and fails miserably, slipping back down with a groan. Nathan ducks behind him and pulls him up carefully, murmuring apologies at every sharp intake of breath. Duke settles against him, lets Nathan support his weight completely and lets his eyes slip closed again, breathing him in. He can feel Nathan’s heart pounding in his chest, his pulse beating erratic and hard under his ear. It’s almost funny and he almost wants to tease him about it, tell him he missed the good parts. And then he opens his eyes again.

The first thing he sees is the blood on Nathan’s shirt, dark red splatter staining the faded grey material. It looks wet, vivid, and he realizes that even if some of it is his that doesn’t account for the pattern.

Kelly’s body is only a few feet away, sprawled at an awkward angle that looks uncomfortable. It’s an irrational thing to think, especially when Duke connects the dots and realizes that the bloody mess he’s been staring at is what’s left of the man’s head. The bat lays next to his body, the end covered in blood and other things that he doesn’t want to think too hard about. He feels light headed again, or still, not too sure which or if it even matters, enough so that he almost doesn’t stop himself from asking Nathan if he isn’t convinced about the wisdom of keeping a baseball bat in the living room closet now.

“We have to get you to a hospital,” Nathan says, startling him back to the present.

“No.” He ignores the immediate sounds of protest, shaking his head. “What am I going to tell them?”

Nathan looks down at him blankly. “The truth.”

“The truth is that I did some really shady things for him. He wouldn’t have been here otherwise. They check for outstanding warrants in the ER a lot of the time, and –“

“You have an outstanding warrant?”

“Yeah, from before. I’ve got a record, remember? Cops get called in assault cases. And then they look for things. You see?” He ignores the sting in his cheekbone, burying his face in the crook of Nathan’s neck. It’s warm and as comfortable as it can be right now in the circle of his arms and Duke can’t escape the nagging feeling that there’s a time limit on that and that he should enjoy it while he can. “It’s not a big deal, but I don’t want to risk it.”

“I don’t know anything about you,” he says absently into Duke’s hair, distant enough that it’s like he’s not even there. “I thought I knew everything.”

“You do, Nate. Everything that matters.”

“No.” Quiet seconds slip by uninterrupted, but eventually he seems to snap out of it. “We have to do something with him. With this, I mean. We have to call somebody, or --”

“I know, but we have to be careful now. You can’t just call the cops. They’re not exactly going to help you clean this up without asking some questions. And they won’t be sympathetic.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Nathan’s voice is distant and hollow as if he’s explaining from outside his body, far away, gone again even though Duke can feel the heat of nervous energy radiating off him. “I thought he was going to –“

“I know you didn’t. And he was,” he says, pressing his lips against the racing beat of Nathan’s pulse as if he can will it calm again. Nathan is going to have to believe that to be ok with what he’s done. And maybe, just a little, Duke is going to need to hang on to it too. “I know.”

He’s not sure how long they sit there like that, Nathan holding on to him like his life depends on it while he tells him anything he can think of that might make it seem like everything is going to be ok.

* * *

Duke has done some questionable things in his life, some that he doesn’t think twice about and a few that he’s not proud of and never will be. Getting rid of a body, however, is not on that list of accomplishments and errors. All he’s got to go on are recollections of police procedural shows and shitty horror novels he read in high school. The only solid idea he’s had so far is that they’ve got to get it out of the building and as far away as possible. Even after that, the place looks like exactly what it is: a crime scene. Every so often some inappropriate snicker bubbles up inside him and all he can think is that there’s no way they’re getting the security deposit back.

Nathan tries to insist on helping him clean the place up, but he’s worse than useless, shaking hands and unfocused eyes. In the end Duke takes care of it as best he can, giving up on getting Nathan to talk to him after a few minutes. Thankfully most of their neighbors are students already gone for the holiday. At least their floor is empty so he can assume the night’s events have been mostly unobserved and will stay that way. Nathan sits on the edge of the couch watching and it’s obvious to Duke that there’s far more going on inside his head than he can hope to figure out. Every so often Nathan opens his mouth as if he’s going to say something, but nothing comes out and he closes it again. He looks lost, not scared or disgusted, just lost.

Finally he settles for bundling what’s left of Kelly into old bedding and hauling him to the not so good part of town just a few miles from their neighborhood of broke college kids. The area is always in the back pages of the paper, muggings and assaults and unaccounted for bodies turning up on a regular schedule. It’s not a good plan. It’s not even a decent one. There’s got to be almost as much of Duke’s blood on the body as its own and there is nothing stealthy about the way he dumps it. It might have been easier, or at least less physically painful, with Nathan’s help, but he hardly noticed Duke leaving. Dragging along someone in shock seems to outweigh any benefit there might have been in another set of hands. In the end all Duke can hope for is that one more unnamed corpse on this side of town won’t raise too many eyebrows. Even if the body is identified he can’t imagine too many people will be looking for Kelly or mourning his loss. He hasn’t thought of it in years, but the memory of his nightmares of drowned ghosts washes over him like ice as he pulls away. The dreams have been gone for years, but he wonders if this will revive them.

When he gets back Nathan seems to have made some cursory progress in cleaning up the destruction. It seems impossibly tight inside and despite the cleared wreckage he can’t stop looking at the near-black stain soaked into the carpet. He can’t be in the apartment any longer than he already has, lungs clawing for air that doesn’t smell coppery and stale. Nathan is sitting on the couch, staring blankly into nothing and Duke holds out a hand, nodding toward the door. “Come on. Let’s get out of here for a minute.”

Nathan looks up at him blankly for a moment before standing, avoiding touching Duke and following him out into the cold. They lean against the building in a silence interrupted by fire sirens and traffic that seems far away, too far to be real. It’s quiet, oddly so, and he wonders absently if it’s going to snow.

“You ok?” he asks, not sure what he can do about the answer either way.

“I can’t do this,” Nathan says quietly as he stares down at his shoes.

“You just did,” he replies before he has a chance to regret it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I can’t do any of this.”

“It’s over, I promise. I know I screwed up, but it won’t happen again. I’ll be careful, and –” Duke knows he’s rambling and he’s not ignorant to how hollow those promises are, but he knows he means them.

“You’ll be careful?” Nathan still doesn’t look toward Duke and when he starts rambling again Nathan cuts him off. “Stop it. Just stop.”

Duke takes a deep breath and pays for it instantly. “I swear it won’t happen again.”

“When this is done –” Nathan breaks off, biting his lip as he stares straight ahead as if Duke isn’t there at all. It’s like he’s willing him away. “When this is done you have to go. Tonight.”

“You don’t mean that.” Duke knows he sounds pathetic, the pleading softness of his voice barely audible. He reaches out for Nathan but he pulls away like Duke’s touch offends him, like it burns. Duke has seen it before, Nathan flinching out of contact he doesn’t want, but he’s never done it to him before. “I know you’re mad but you don’t mean it. I can fix this, I swear. I know I fucked up but I can fix it. I’ll get out of this, we can go somewhere else. We can go anywhere.”

“I already asked you to do that once and you wouldn’t. You already made your choice.” When he finally glances in Duke’s direction he’s a study of indifference, his eyes not quite meeting Duke’s. “I’m done.”

“You can’t do this now. Just sleep on it. I can stay with somebody, we can talk in a couple of days. You’re not thinking clearly, I get it. I can fix this Nate, I swear.”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” The anger creeping into his voice is low and deadly enough that for a minute all Duke can think of is the scene he just removed from their living room, taking a step back without meaning to. It’s not lost on Nathan, and all he can think about are Nathan’s words from earlier echoing in his head – _I don’t know anything about you_. “This is the first time I’ve thought clearly in years. What just happened up there…I can’t live with that. And I have to, because you had to have your way. I have to live with that now.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You can’t just be sorry for some things. Jesus Christ, I shouldn’t have to explain this to you.” He sinks back against the building, his eyes slipping closed. The silence hangs heavy between them until he finally speaks again. “I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering when something like this is going to happen. I can’t always be waiting for this.”

“You won’t, I promise. We’ll be together like you wanted and this won’t matter anymore.” He can’t be persuasive, can’t even try to come up with an argument more convincing than the need that courses between them when they touch, the nameless thing he sees when their eyes meet. There just isn’t anything that he can imagine mattering more than that. “This doesn’t change anything, not really.”

“I know,” he says, the resolve in his voice unnerving Duke completely. “That’s the problem. Nothing is going to change unless I change it.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

“No, I don’t.” Duke is familiar with this tone, the one that says there’s nothing more to discuss, no room for debate. “But I should have when this started. Before this happened and….I should have let you go before this ever started again. This was always going to happen. It was just a matter of time.”

“So you’re just going to walk. Just like that.”

He looks like he’s going to argue, but whatever spark of fight is still flickering behind his eyes fades out. “Yeah. I guess I am. I can’t live with myself and live with someone like you.”

At first Duke isn’t sure where the anger that floods him comes from, but realistically he knows. Everything they couldn’t talk about because Nathan wouldn’t admit they could be less than perfect or it could be less than easy, resenting having to do that, hating himself for not being better than going along with it. There’s no avoiding the knowledge that he’s to blame here, but there’s also no getting around Nathan’s need for his duplicity. With the exception of those two miserable years he’s never known any other life except one with Nathan. So it’s not that he thinks Nathan is wrong about much of anything he’s saying, but it’s also not like it was a secret. It’s not like Nathan didn’t know him going into this because Duke has never changed, not really, from day one.

“You’re really going to act like this is something I did to you?” He doesn’t wait for a response, ignoring the beginnings of protest forming. “I never made you do anything, Nathan. I lied to you because you didn’t give me any other choice and we both know you’re not an idiot. It’s not like you were clueless. I know I’m pretty far from perfect, and I know that’s hard for you to deal with but at least I admit it. At least give enough of a shit about you to take your freaky problems and you the way you are. I don’t expect you to be somebody else because it would be less of a pain in my ass.”

He doesn’t even really comprehend what he’s said at first. When he does it hits him harder than any of the physical blows he’s taken today. And that doesn’t seem to begin to compare to the way it strikes Nathan. He stares back at Duke with a strangled look on his face, like he could actually choke on the words.

“God, Nate, I’m sorry.” He knows he should come up with something better than that, but there’s nothing that will fix what he’s said already. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Nathan is already turning away as Duke fumbles for an apology, fishing keys out of his pocket and not looking back. “Take care of it and go. I don’t want you here when I get back.”

There isn’t an answer to the finality of this and Duke knows that anything he says to try and fix it is just going to be twisted into ugliness and hurled back at him. He closes his eyes and breathes in what’s left of Nathan’s scent on him, tries to memorize the warmth of his closeness from before. There won’t be another chance to and he knows it’s all he’s going to take with him when he leaves.

* * *

 _June 2009_

“Honestly? It doesn’t surprise me. Geoff’s always been…” Bill trails off, smiling apologetically as if it’s somehow his fault that his brother is a jerk. “Well, he’s always been Geoff. But I’m sorry that happened.”

“Me too.” Duke can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s not old enough to drink at McShaw’s, but Bill’s parents are long retired and he’s more than ten years from twenty-one, plenty old enough for the glass in his hand. The place hasn’t changed a bit since the last time he was here, the only cloth napkin and parsley garnish place in town. It’s too late for lunch and too early for dinner and Duke took a chance on finding Bill here at all, but as it turns out he and Meg never quite got out of Haven. It’s more common than not and always had been. Everyone they went to school with swore that they’d never come back, but nine times out of ten four years at college was as far away from home as any of them got. Even the few that did get free of Haven eventually found their way home. That includes Duke now too, but he has no intention of staying longer than he has to. Geoff, it seems, is one of the few to actually get out and stay gone.

“He’s not here much, obviously.” He’s busy prepping the bar for the evening crowd but it’s obvious that Bill doesn’t need to concentrate very hard on anything he’s doing. It’s funny; he never wanted to have anything to do with the restaurant and yet it always seemed inevitable. “You know he and Meg don’t exactly get on and he and Dad had it out pretty bad the last time he was here for the holidays. But he talks about you. I know he misses you. He’s been talking about leaving New York and coming back here for a while now, trying to make something out of this place.”

“I wish I was going to be here long enough to see him.” If he were here Duke knows he’d have forgiven Geoff already, no reason to hang on to the grudge between them. “I can leave you a way to get in touch with me, if you think he’d call.”

“No, he won’t. Not until I ride him about it for months,” Bill laughs, gesturing for Duke to hand him his empty glass. “So you’re taking off after the funeral? I thought maybe you’d stick around for a while.”

“I’m gone as soon as it’s over. Nothing to stick around for, you know?” Duke accepts the glass again and fights the urge to drain it in a swallow. He’s only been back a few hours and already it feels a little like he never left. If there’s anything constant in the world, Haven might be it. Tourist season is in full swing and the town is crowded with summer people, all of them indifferent to anything here beyond the beaches and antique stores. It feels like getting lost in time, as if he and Bill were teenagers again with nothing to do but talk up their adventures with out of town girls and be relieved when they left August. “I don’t think there’s going to be anyone there but me. I haven’t seen any of her family from Montreal since I was a kid and she’s probably pissed off anybody here who would have cared. Bitter and mean is no way to go through life, let alone out of it.”

It’s true and they both know it, but Bill still frowns in disapproval. “There’ll be me and Meg. You don’t have to be as hard as she was, Duke.”

He doesn’t want to be. It would be easier to feel anything at all about her death, at least more normal. It just doesn’t seem real at this distance, not when his friends always felt more like family and he’s lost touch with most of them as well. Duke expects to feel it at some point, after the funeral is over and the house is sold, but now there’s just a vague annoyance and the desire to put as many miles between himself and Haven as possible. As much as it seems like he might never have left there’s also the strange feeling that it’s just a weird not-quite memory, something he dreamed up vividly enough to believe it was real. Everything he’s always accepted as fact about Haven seems just distant enough from reality to make lucid dreaming seem like the most logical explanation. The farther away from it he gets the less real it seems and he’s not sure if that’s really a bad thing at all. If it’s not real then he can’t get trapped here.

“I don’t mean to be. It’s just a weird way to come back.” He knows he could tell Bill all of the reasons he doesn’t want to be here, but unless things have changed drastically Duke is certain Bill has already put two and two together and he doesn’t need to explain any of that anyway. “It’s good to see you though. I didn’t even know if you’d still be around.”

“Where am I going to go?” He laughs as he says it, but there’s a hollow sound to it and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “We promised we wouldn’t sell the place. Besides,” he continues, and whatever disappointment Duke saw is gone in an instant, “we’ve got family here. Friends. Not everybody was born to walk alone or whatever it is you do.”

“Did you seriously just quote Whitesnake at me?” Days of not enough sleep and too much being pissed off at ever having to step foot in Haven again are catching up with him and Duke can’t stop laughing, finally dropping his head to rest on his arms on the bar and letting it overtake him. “God, you make it sound so dramatic.”

Bill takes his glass but doesn’t refill it, and that’s probably for the best at this point. “Cut me some slack. You’re the only person I know who leads a life of crime.”

“I’m an importer. Perfectly legitimate.”

“Right. And this place is the Four Seasons of Maine.”

They fall into silence for a few moments, Bill restocking glasses and Duke letting his mind wander far enough to entertain what exactly might constitute such an appellation. He hardly notices when Bill comes out from behind the bar to sit next to him until he speaks again.

“You ever think about staying? Seriously, I mean. It’s not like you don’t have friends here. When Geoff comes back it’ll be like old times.”

It’s really not the worst thing Duke can think of, especially not if it actually was like old times. He knows everybody is supposed to look back on adolescence with loathing, but in all honesty he could do worse than life before he left home. In fact he’s done considerably worse on and off over the years. He’s gotten used to being alone most of the time because it’s easy, and maybe even likes it a little now, but having someplace to come home to wouldn’t be the worst thing he could imagine. Maybe even if it had to be here. But it wouldn’t ever be the same and trying to ignore the missing pieces would be worse than just walking away. He’s been giving himself this pep talk since he knew he’d be coming back and he’ll give it as many times as he has to in order to get it through his head. All these years later and Duke is still terrible at taking his own good advice, but this is not going to be one of those times.

“I could get a storefront and put out a sign. Friendly local smuggler – our rates are low, but our standards are high.” He ignores Bill’s snort of derision, shaking his head. “I tried that before, remember? It didn’t turn out so well. “

“He came back, you know.” The apology is back all over Bill’s face and he ducks his head as Duke stares at him with what must be the dumbest look he’s ever worn. “I should have said something before. Or not said anything?”

There are a few things he thinks about saying, none of them anything his dignity is going to survive speaking aloud. At first he almost goes with feigning ignorance and/or indifference, but he’s not willing to revert quite that deeply into high school behavior just because he’s back home. Instead he shrugs it off, tries to pull the stupid away from his expression and says “Oh.”

Duke doesn’t pine for him after all this time, not exactly. To be honest it was easier to push all of that, all of them into a distant memory than it should have been. At the time Duke would have sworn that he couldn’t live without Nathan, but of course that was youthful hyperbole. He’s come to realize that there is very little he can’t accustom himself to living without if the need arises and most of the things that seemed deadly vital at sixteen or seventeen hardly register these days. He doesn’t try to convince himself that he never felt those things; he knows he did and he doesn’t regret them. He won’t even try to claim that he doesn’t think about Nathan, because he does. All the time. He never stopped feeling those things for him and doesn’t really want to. But it’s still a detached reminisce, like flipping through old photographs or seeing himself in an ancient home movie, so far gone that the images don’t always make sense and he can’t completely remember what they meant to begin with. Duke resigned himself to never seeing Nathan again a very long time ago. Wanting doesn’t make miracles.

“I shouldn’t have said anything.” Bill looks as if there’s something else he wants to add but thinks better of it, and Duke is honestly just relieved that he leaves it alone.

“It’s not a big deal. We haven’t—” He pauses for a moment, not entirely sure how to explain what happened between them. He understands the details and if he were going to share them with anyone Bill would be as good a candidate as any, but putting those pieces together into a coherent explanation for someone else seems daunting. Besides, he doesn’t want to burden Bill with it. What happened is his and Nathan’s to bear, the last thing that will ever be just between the two of them. A morbid, ugly thing, but theirs none the less. “We haven’t talked in years, let alone seen each other. I don’t even know him anymore.”

Bill looks at him pityingly for a moment and it grates on every one of Duke’s nerves, making him want to spew a bunch of defensive bullshit about how it wasn’t his choice and he wasn’t the one who made up and enforced the arbitrary rules that are to blame. Maybe there is something about Haven that brings out the worst in him.

“You could. Talk, I mean.”

“No,” Duke says, wishing he still had a full glass in front of him. “We probably can’t.”

* * *

Half an hour later he’s standing in front of Nathan’s house wondering what the hell he’s thinking. It wasn’t a long walk from the restaurant to the street number Bill gave him, but it was just long enough to give Duke time to reflect on how poor an idea this is. He has no idea what it is he’s going to say when he sees Nathan or how whatever he comes up with will be received. Last time it was easier, nobody really at fault or at least everyone equally to blame for the two years they spent apart. Things are different now, and not just the circumstances that place most of the blame squarely on his shoulders. Beyond that he has no idea what he’s going to find because Bill didn’t exactly bury him in detail. There’s no reason to believe that Nathan has stayed alone all this time just because he has. Duke isn’t being coy when he thinks he doesn’t know what he expects to happen, or wants to happen. He just needs to find out.

The porch light is the only illumination around the house, a weathered looking gray shingled single story sitting on a small patch of lawn at a comfortable distance from the street. The place is neat but unremarkable and there’s nothing identifying about it beyond a mailbox with 1408 neatly stenciled on the side. It’s obvious no one is home and for a moment Duke is almost willing to take that as a sign and turn on his heel while it’s still easy to do so. No one ever needs to know he was here.

Of course, no one will need to know he was there if he has a look around either. The lock is simple to pick and Nathan doesn’t bother with a deadbolt. As far as Duke can remember nobody ever did in Haven; when he was a kid it was small town enough that most people didn’t lock their doors. Inside he closes the door and blinks in the dim evening light, letting his eyes adjust and scanning the room around him for some obvious indicator that he’s got the right place, something that is obviously Nathan.

Anyone could live here, he realizes. Nothing clicks and gives him the shiver of recognition that he expects to feel because he could be standing in the showroom of a discount furniture store. The living room is standard issue, a couch and an ugly old chair, TV centered on one wall and bookshelves lining the others. No pictures, no identifying markers. It’s neat but not unusually so, several manila folders and their contents spread out over a low coffee table and an empty beer bottle on the floor next to it. A quick shuffle through the messy stacks of paperwork shows that most of it bears the Haven PD logo in the top left corner and the reported by field is filled in with Nathan’s name in the painstaking handwriting he always used for things he thought were important. Detective Nathan Wuornos.

“Jesus, Nathan,” he says quietly, as if someone might be listening in the shadows. “You don’t atone halfway, do you?”

That should be enough and he knows it. In fact, it should be more than enough, because breaking and entering is definitely a crime in all fifty states and far harder to get away with when the residence broken and entered belongs to a cop. A perverse impulse at the back of his mind urges him on anyway, convincing him that he’s not going to be satisfied until he sees everything, whether or not Nathan lives alone and if he still keeps a book next to the bed and kicks off his shoes just inside the bedroom door. Even after Duke can satisfy both of those queries with affirmatives ( _The Black Rapids_ by Bill Denbrough, something he knows Nathan has read at least a dozen times since high school, and a pair of running shoes inches from the doorframe) he can’t make himself leave. The same little bookshelf they used as a nightstand in Boston sits next to Nathan’s bed and Duke stares at it for a moment, wondering, before he starts pushing away the spare change and old receipts and pulling away the row of books pushed forward just a bit too much on the top shelf.

The box he finds tucked away carefully is small and rectangular, a little shorter than a shoebox, and Duke settles on the floor with it in his lap next to the bed. He doesn’t open it right away, partly because it feels a little creepy to be going through Nathan’s things as if he was dead or something and more so because he knows damn well his intrusion wouldn’t be welcome. And for all he knows it’s full of last year’s tax return or something equally interesting. His fingers tap an unsteady rhythm against the top of the box as he tells himself this is going to be disappointing one way or another, but eventually he takes a deep breath and pulls off the lid. Inside there’s stack of envelopes bound neatly with a rubber band, the same ones he sent to Nathan years ago.

The letters don’t look any different than they did when he sent them, or when he found Nathan finally reading them, although the torn edges of the envelopes seem a little worse for the wear. Duke doesn’t open any of them, but he can’t put them down right away either, turning the first one in the stack over in his hands and tracing the rough edge of the paper carefully.

There’s a small pile of photographs haphazardly tossed beneath the letters and he flips through them, trying to place the settings of the pictures and when they were taken. There are a few that are just of him, but most of them are him and Nathan together, kids who hadn’t grown into their limbs yet. The last one in the pile is the picture Nathan slipped into his pocket the night before he left for school; Duke hadn’t felt right taking it, or any of these. Finding them should hurt, or make it stop hurting, he’s not sure which, and maybe it’s a little of both. But there’s no relief in finding it, just a distinct lack of surprise. After all it isn’t as if Nathan made him leave because he wanted to.

Duke doesn’t know how long he sits there going through the photos, but the sound of footsteps in the hall is quickly followed by the cocking of a gun. “Stand up slowly and get your hands were I can see them.” Nathan squints into the dimness for a moment before recognition crosses his face and he lowers his gun. There’s only the briefest of pauses and then recognition hardens into something else as he raises it again  
.  
He complies, rising carefully with his hands out in front of him. “Hey Nate.”

Nathan flicks on the light with his elbow, not backing down even a little. “You know it’s legal to shoot a prowler in Maine.”

“That really doesn’t surprise me.” It’s surreal having this conversation under these circumstances, and Duke isn’t entirely sure Nathan won’t shoot him for spite or greater justice or god knows what reason that is in all likelihood entirely justified. “Could you maybe point that somewhere else, Officer Wuornos? I come in peace.”

He shoves the gun back into its holster but keeps right on glaring a hole in Duke that might be slightly more effective than bullets. “Want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

“Here in your house or here in Haven?”

“Whichever is easier to explain so you can get the hell out of both.”

“Death in the family.” That one was infinitely easier to explain and Duke uses some of the time it buys him to study Nathan as he considers the information. He’s not twenty-two anymore, obviously, and he looks enough like a cop that Duke swears he could have read it on him without any other incriminating evidence. He’s still kind of beautiful, a thought that slips in before Duke can do anything to prevent it, and even with the half angry half scared look on his face it’s overwhelming. Maybe because of it. “The rest, I don’t know. I wanted to see you.”

“You should go.” Nathan steps aside like there’s anything about their history that would encourage him to think Duke will go without a fight or at least a smartass remark or two. Neither of them move, Duke staring at him and Nathan looking anywhere but at Duke and finally he says, a little of the sharpness bled from his voice, “Your mom?”

“Yeah, a couple of days ago.” Duke realizes he’s still holding the box and sets it down on the bookshelf behind him, carefully setting the top back on. “How long?”

“Almost nine years,” he answers, not needing Duke to clarify.

“Why?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just staring back at Duke as if it would be impossible to make him understand if he doesn’t already. Which might be true; there’s no reason he can fathom that would explain Nathan coming back to Haven and working for his father. The uncertainty in his expression pulls at Duke with a miserably uncomfortable familiarity and makes him want to fix it for him even though he knows he can’t. He’s taking a step toward Nathan, reaching for him like his touch would be welcome before he even realizes it. Loving him is etched into him like muscle memory, and the recognition of it twists inside him. Like it or not, this isn’t something he gets to leave behind or get over.

He thinks maybe he almost gets it all when he comprehends that, why Nathan came back and why he couldn’t leave again without seeing him. When they were hundreds of miles away, when they were apart for years before and after, they never really got out. All the things Nathan hates about it and the reasons he always swore he didn’t belong in Haven are the same things that keep him from belonging anywhere else.

Finally he looks away, shrugging as if he assumes they’ve come to the same logical conclusion. “Maybe I can make up for it, coming back here.”

“You don’t have anything to make up for.” He ignores the look of disgust that crosses Nathan’s face as he closes the distance between them, placing a tentative hand on his arm. It’s nothing, touch that would acceptable among the barest acquaintances, but he’s never forgotten Nathan’s skin under his fingers and it staggers him a little. But if it has any effect on Nathan at all he doesn’t show it, not even a flicker of acknowledgment. “I would have done the same thing if it had been you. I wouldn’t have thought about it and I wouldn’t regret it.”

“Must be convenient, not having to bother with a conscience.” Maybe he means to sound superior, or just angry, but it comes out pathetically sincere, like that’s all he wants. “I’m not like you.”

“I know. But you kept all of that all these years, even after what happened,” he says, nodding back toward the box on the bed. “It has to be worth something to you still. You and me.”

“So what if it is?” There’s a thread of unevenness in Nathan’s voice, the suggestion that he doesn’t know if any of that matters or how it would change things. Under the leftover anger and the intervening years Duke can’t help but see them the way they were the night Nathan left for college, the uncertainty about what they meant to each other and the size of it threatening to crush them. “It doesn’t change anything.”

Frustration surges through Duke like it’s in his blood, inescapable. “Look, I get what you’re trying to do. You think you deserve this and you can do some kind of penance but that’s stupid, Nate. You’re not tied to this, any of it. You can walk away from it and not look back and it doesn’t change a damn thing. The only person who needs to forgive you for it is you. You really think anybody is crying themselves to sleep over him?”

“You and I both know that’s not the point.”

“There isn’t any point. It happened, you did what you thought you had to do and now it’s over. You’re so worried about the consequences – what do you think would have happened if you hadn’t done it?”

He’s not surprised when Nathan shrugs that off, but it is disappointing. “I don’t know. I don’t know if it matters.”

“It matters. You’re never going to let it go if you stay here trying to pay for something that isn’t even your fault. You really want to spend the rest of your life here under your dad’s thumb?” Duke suspects that ‘s exactly what he wants, but the idea of Nathan giving in and letting the chief have his way after he managed to break free eats at him in ways he knows aren’t quite rational. Nathan is old enough to choose his own life and if this is what he wants, it’s none of Duke’s business. The problem is that logic has never had anything to do with them and never will.

“And do what?” he asks like he might genuinely want an answer.

“I’m leaving soon, all I have to do is sign some papers and I’m gone. Come with me.” There’s no time for Duke’s brain to interfere with the words coming out of his mouth. He knows they’re stupid, impractical, impossible. But they come out anyway and he can’t quite bring himself to regret them for anything other than the way they seem to harden Nathan’s expression.

“I can’t,” he says, barely audible.

“It can be like before. You and me.” Duke thought he could satisfy his curiosity, but looking back he should have known how it would end from the minute he found out Nathan was here. No amount of telling himself that this didn't matter could make it that way in reality. “Just come with me, please. I’ll figure out how to make it right. You can’t tell me you don’t want that.”

“Duke, I can’t –“

Whatever Nathan would have said is lost when their mouths meet, Duke gripping him tight like that alone can convince him and keep him from pulling away. Nathan doesn’t push him away, but his arms are stiff at his sides and it takes him a second to return the kiss. When he does it’s awkward, too eager and too hard but Duke doesn’t care, and when they pull back they’re both breathing hard. He’s about to lean in again, needy for more, but something about the look on Nathan’s face stops him cold. It’s nothing he can read easily, the hard edge that kept him out is gone now and Nathan looks wide open and fragile somehow, like he’s gotten much younger in the seconds they touched.

“I’m sorry.” The words are more breathed than spoken, sound stolen by Nathan’s proximity. “If it’s too soon or you don’t want it to be like that, it’s fine. I didn’t mean to push you.”

Nathan shakes his head and it takes him a minute to answer. “I can’t feel you. I can’t feel anything.”

It’s ridiculous, but Duke can’t make that make sense, tightening his hold on Nathan as if he doesn’t understand why that doesn’t matter. He tries not to react, stifling the stream of curses running through his head and hoping like hell none of it shows on his face. “Like before? Since when?”

“Like before. It’s been like this for a while.” He’s boneless against Duke, like he can’t support himself now and wouldn’t bother, limp and sinking.

“The Troubles are back.”

“No,” Nathan snaps, finally shoving him off and out of his space. He gets as far away from Duke has he can, arms crossed on his chest like he’s warning him to stay away. “It’s a neurological disorder. Idiopathic neuropathy. They don’t know what caused it, it just happened. It’s random. It doesn’t have anything to do with – they aren’t even real. It’s random.” He breaks off, realizing he’s rambling, and the pieces fall together for Duke. Of course he won’t leave. He thinks this is just more of what he deserves, but he’s still blaming Duke for all of it and he won’t accept the Troubles anymore than he ever would. Leaving would mean admitting that this wasn’t the punishment he deserved for what happened in Boston; the universe would be random, unconcerned with Nathan’s rights or wrongs, indifferent to his pain.

First the Troubles took away his sense of touch. Cancer took his mother. His father took away what he had with Duke. Then Duke helped take away the life he made for himself. He has to believe that fate gave him this penance, that he earned it and it’s no one’s but his. Otherwise he’s left with nothing at all.

Duke understands it, but he can’t make himself accept it and lie down like a bitch for fate just because Nathan’s decided to. “Maybe if you left –“

“It has nothing to do with Haven.”

“Ok. You don’t want to leave, that’s fine. I’ll stay, we’ll figure it out. Maybe it will go away and if it doesn’t we deal with it.” He can feel Nathan slipping through his fingers, practically see him closing down again right in front of him and panic shoots threads of desperation through him, frantic and needy. “Let me do this with you.”

“What do you get out of it?” He smirks at the look of confusion and disappointment Duke knows is all over his face. “What do you get out of it, Duke? Because we both know there’s got to be some advantage in it for you.”

“You. I get you back.”

“Right. You’re going to stay here with me, when I can’t even fucking touch you anymore, out of the goodness of your heart. Let me guess, you’ll change, it’ll be different and you’ll give up everything illegal because you just want to do the right thing. Where have I heard that before?”

“It’s not like that,” he protests, but it’s useless. He still knows Nathan well enough to know when his mind is made up and it’s obvious he’s not budging on this.

“It’s always like that.” Anger and hurt and a million other things all tied up together in an ugly package are rolling off Nathan almost tangibly, almost sharp enough to cut Duke down where he stands. “It was pretty convenient for you before, wasn’t it? Make a few promises you have no intention of keeping and get away with whatever you want because I’m some freak who should just be grateful you stick around. Is that how you think it’s going to be again?”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he says weakly, knowing exactly how it sounds. It had been in anger and nervous gnawing fear, but he had said it. He said it at the absolute worst time he could have and there was no alternative way for Nathan to take it. In that moment they’d been eight years old again and he’d meant every word of it.

“Yeah, Duke, you did. And I was stupid all that time thinking you changed, but you never did. So if you think you’re going to set up your little business here and I’m going to look the other way because you’re good enough to put up with this,” he says, gesturing toward himself in clear disgust, “you can go to hell.”

“You honestly think that’s what this is.” The dismissive answering nod, like it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain, severs something inside Duke. He can feel it happen, part of himself cut away and twisted into something broken and poisoned without any hope of repair. He isn’t the one who never changes, not in the ways that matter. He never was and he gets that now. There will never be a time when Nathan can see him, any part of him other than the fuck ups and the mistakes, no matter how much of himself he opens up for dissection. It will always be the same, Duke telling him the truth he doesn’t want to hear and Nathan insisting it’s lies while he rewrites reality to fit all the damage inside himself. Nathan has accomplished what his father never could – he’s completely alone and allows himself nothing but this town, his job, the chief’s mission. “God, you really are fucked up Nate. But it has nothing to do with the Troubles.”

For just a second he can see something break, a tiny flinch and a crack in Nathan’s composure, and Duke is just stupid enough to think it might mean anything. But it’s gone as soon as it comes and he turns away, refusing to look at him again. “Get out. Do what you have to do here and don’t come back.”

Duke is about tell him that he’s going to do exactly that, walk away from Nathan and Haven and never look back or regret it, but he stops, closing his mouth around the words. “That would make things easier for you, wouldn’t it?”

Nathan just glares back at him, his hand twitching like he’d like nothing better than to make good on his right to shoot uninvited guests. “Yeah. It would.”

He doesn’t bother looking back as he leaves because he knows exactly what Nathan looks like right now, the realization dawning in his expression and the rage that’s probably exploding inside him. This is beyond his control, just outside the boundaries of his ordered little world. He can’t make Duke leave, can’t even try to without having to come in contact with him. Maybe eventually he’ll come around, but Duke doesn’t hold out hope for that. Nathan is intractable, always was and probably always will be, and once he has to accept that he can’t make him leave that’s only going to get worse. It would be the smartest thing Duke could do to put as many miles between them as he can and live on the memory of them like he’s been doing since the last time he saw Nathan. He could make himself feel as little as Nathan and it would probably be for the best. But he’s never been the smart one and he never will be.

In the end he knows this will end badly for both of them, cut them up and make them hate each other, ruin any chance he might have had of salvaging anything between them. It’s like he can see every wrong move he’ll make and every stupid hateful word that will come out of his mouth but he can’t make himself care. He’s going to be exactly as selfish as Nathan says he is, give him everything he asked for. Hell, maybe he can exceed his expectations. It will sting like tearing skin every time, but at least it will be something. And he knows without any doubt that he will make Nathan feel something, feel him, every single day.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * A [Restricted Work] by [dr_ducktator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dr_ducktator/pseuds/dr_ducktator) Log in to view. 




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